The Phyllis Schlafly Report
-- Vol. 30, No. 5 * Box 618, Alton, Illinois 62002 *
December 1996 --
Feminist Assault on Reasonableness
Twenty years after women began attending law schools in greater
numbers, feminists are turning up as law school professors, law
review writers, state legislators, congressional staffers,
prosecutors, law clerks and even judges. It's splendid to have
women in all those positions, but large numbers of feminists are
causing ominous dislocations in basic concepts of American law and
justice. An excellent policy analysis on "feminist jurisprudence"
by the CATO Institute explains why.
The feminist goal is not fair treatment for women, but the
redistribution of power from the "dominant" class (the male
patriarchal system) to the "subordinate" class (nominally women,
but actually only the feminists who know how to play by rules they
have invented).
Feminists have peddled the fiction that men are engaged in a vast
conspiracy against women, that something like 85 percent of
employed women are sexually harassed in the workplace, and that
something on the order of 50 to 70 percent of wives are beaten by
their husbands.
Feminists want to establish the rule that offenses against women
should be defined (not objectively, but subjectively) on the basis
of how the woman felt instead of what the defendant did.
Before the feminist movement burst on the scene in the 1970s,
there were literally hundreds of laws that gave advantages or
protections to women based on society's common sense recognition
of the facts of life and human nature. These included the
prohibition against statutory rape, the Mann Act, the obligation
of the husband to support his wife and provide her with a home,
special protections for widows (e.g., one state gave widows a
little property tax exemption, another prescribed triple penalties
against anyone who cheated a widow), and laws that made it a
misdemeanor to use obscene or profane language in the presence of
a woman.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the premier feminist lawyer in the 1970s.
Then a professor at Columbia University Law School, she argued
that all such differences of treatment based on gender were sex
discriminatory and, therefore, should be abolished. She won
several Supreme Court cases on that theory. In state after state,
as well as in Congress, feminist lawyers persuaded legislators to
gender-neutralize their laws.
In theory, Ginsburg appeared to demand a doctrinaire equality,
opposing the Mann Act because it "was meant to protect weak women
from bad men," which she believed was demeaning to women. But in
practice, she demanded affirmative action for women, even in the
military. Ginsburg's exposition of her views on the "equality
principle" are contained in her book Sex Bias in the U.S. Code
(published by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 1977, and
summarized in the Phyllis Schlafly Report, July 1993).
In the 1990s, the feminists no longer even pay lip service to a
gender equality goal (except, of course, when it suits their
purposes). Their goals are the feminization and subordination of
men, and their tactics are to cry "victimization" and
"conspiracy." They have launched a broadside attack on such basic
precepts as equality under the law, judicial neutrality, a
defendant is innocent until proven guilty, conviction requires
proof beyond a reasonable doubt, and guilt or liability should be
judged according to the traditional "reasonable man" theory.
Female plaintiffs had always been able to sue for offensive sexual
actions in the workplace by using the common law remedies of tort
and contract. Feminists reject these remedies because they want
sexual harassment cases to be based on the nutty notion of a male
conspiracy to victimize women and/or their newly-invented legal
theory that a "hostile work environment" is a form of "sex
discrimination" prohibited by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
The U.S. Supreme Court adopted this feminist theory in the 1986
case of Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson, where the Court even went
so far as to say that "'voluntariness' in the sense of consent" is
not a defense. This notion had been invented by Michigan Law
School professor Catharine Mackinnon, who was reported to have
boasted, "What the decision means is that we made this law up from
the beginning, and now we've won." That's exactly what happened.
In a 1991 Jacksonville, Florida case, a federal district court
found an employer guilty of a "hostile work environment" even
though there was no evidence of sexual language or demands
directed at the plaintiff who claimed she felt sexually harassed.
The other female workers said they did not feel sexually harassed,
but the judge said that their testimony merely provided
"additional evidence of victimization." In order to accommodate
their claim that 85 percent of employed women are sexually
harassed, the feminists have defined it so broadly that it is
trivialized to include behavior that is merely annoying.
A 1991 Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision replaced the common
law "reasonable man" standard with a "reasonable woman" test,
embracing the 1990s feminist notion that men and women can't see
the same events in the same way. The court declared that the old
common law standard "systematically ignores the experiences of
women."
The "unreasonable woman" rule is what the feminists are demanding
now. The feminists want the victim rather than the law to define
the offense. Remember, the feminists repealed the old laws making
it a misdemeanor to speak "any obscene, profane, indecent, vulgar,
suggestive or immoral message" to a woman or girl. Now, they argue
that it's just as actionable for a man to call a woman "honey" or
"baby" as to call her a "bitch." The feminists are trying to
enforce rules that any man's words can be punished if a woman
subjectively doesn't like them, and the basis is how the woman
felt rather than what the man said.
The feminists are actively promoting college speech codes to
prohibit what they call discriminatory or harassing speech. Of
course, jokes are not allowed because feminists have no sense of
humor. Nearly 400 colleges and universities have these anti-First
Amendment speech regulations, about a third of which target mere
"advocacy of offensive or outrageous viewpoints or biased ideas."
The feminists want the battered woman syndrome to free any woman
from conviction of violent crime. The feminists are even pushing
the Catharine Mackinnon fantasy that all heterosexual sex should
be considered rape unless an affirmative, sober, explicit verbal
consent can be proved.
The feminists want the action of a battered woman who kills her
husband to be considered as normal. They want us to believe that
killing a man in his sleep can be excused as self-defense. They
want to establish a license for women to kill their allegedly
abusive spouses.
More lawyers, scholars and academics are badly needed to speak up
and expose the feminist foolishness for what it is: a scurrilous
attack on our Bill of Rights.
(See CATO Institute, Feminist Jurisprudence: Equal Rights or Neo-
Paternalism, June 19, 1996)
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The Feminists' War on VMI
The successful legal and media campaign to force the all-male
Virginia Military Institute to admit women wasn't about "ending
sex discrimination" or "allowing women to have access to the same
educational benefits that men have at VMI." It was a no-holds-
barred fight to feminize VMI waged by the radical feminists and
their allies in the Federal Government. The feminists just can't
stand it that any institution in America would be permitted to
motivate and train real men to manifest the uniquely masculine
attributes. Feminists want to gender-neutralize society so they
can intimidate and control men.
The feminists' longtime, self-proclaimed goal is an androgynous
society. Repudiating constitutional intent, history, tradition and
human nature, they seek to forbid us, in public or private life,
to recognize the differences between men and women.
Feminist strategy is straightforward: whine that women are victims
of centuries of "oppression" and "stereotyping," lay a guilt trip
on men, and use all the stereotypical cultural techniques that
women have always used to wheedle what they want out of men. Then,
use feminists on the public payroll in all three branches of
government to change the laws in order to force us to conform.
So, the Supreme Court, speaking through Ruth Bader Ginsburg, ruled
that it is unconstitutional for VMI to exclude women. The notion
that a military institution that functioned with success, public
acceptance, and significant prestige for 157 years, suddenly, one
day in June 1996, could be rationally said to violate the
Constitution is patently ridiculous. Black robes and Ginsburg's
devious rhetoric about "scrutiny" can't make sense out of such
judicial arrogance.
VMI is now trying to admit women and treat them just like the male
cadets (which is what the feminists said they wanted before the
Supreme Court decision). Now it turns out that equality wasn't
what the feminists wanted after all. Janet Reno's feminist Justice
Department has gone into court to argue that failing to make
adjustments for female recruits would amount to "discrimination"
because it would discourage women from applying or lead them to
drop out. Government lawyers are arguing that VMI must make far-
reaching efforts to attract and retain female recruits and develop
special training for them.
The VMI case is just one more example of the lies and double
standards, the chicanery and hypocrisy, that are part and parcel
of feminist strategy, tactics, and objectives.
==========================================================
The Feminists Have Global Goals, Too
Did you think that those United Nations Conferences held in Cairo,
Beijing and Istanbul were just consciousness-raising sessions
where the feminists in the Clinton Administration could
commiserate with females from 189 countries about how badly women
are treated by the male patriarchal society? Well, think again.
When we give the feminists a tax-paid junket to cultivate their
grievances, you can bet they will use that opportunity to cook up
a lot of mischief.
Did you think that, in our constitutional government, "all
legislative powers" are vested in the Congress, where laws, to be
valid, must be passed by a majority in both Houses? Well, think
again. The feminists have devised a sneaky way to bypass the
constitutional process, achieve what they want by "consensus" at a
UN conference, and then use the federal bureaucracy to implement
their policies as though they were law.
In May 1996, the Clinton Administration set up the President's
Interagency Council on Women chaired by those two longtime friends
and co-conspirators in feminist activism, Hillary Rodham Clinton
and HHS Secretary Donna Shalala. Its mission is to "follow up on
U.S. commitments made at the UN Fourth World Conference on Women,
Beijing, September 4-15, 1995." On September 28, 1996 the
President's Interagency Council held a national conference via
satellite to report on the "progress" made toward Beijing's
"Platform for Action."
Soon after the feminists returned from China in 1995, UN
Ambassador Madeleine Albright, who was the U.S. Delegation chair
in Beijing, spelled out the goals in a document called "Bring
Beijing Home." These included "family responsibilities must be
shared" (obviously, the government should force husbands to do the
dishes and the diapers) and, of course, assuring abortion rights.
Albright announced that Beijing had produced "an international
women's movement of activists, advocates and advisors to the
nations of the world." U.S. taxpayers paid one-third of the $14
million bill for the gab session.
The Beijing commitments are now being implemented through a
federal entity composed of high-level representatives from 30
federal agencies. It holds monthly meetings, engages in outreach
activities, conducts local seminars, and uses a White House
address.
The longtime feminist goal called "comparable worth" is a major
goal of this President's Interagency Council. The feminists think
it's unfair that jobs held mostly by men, such as plumber and
prison guard, have higher pay than clerical jobs held mostly by
women. The feminists allege that paper credentials are "worth"
more than unpleasant or dangerous working conditions. Although
nobody is stopping more women from becoming plumbers and prison
guards, the feminists say "pay equity" requires freezing the wages
of male-dominated jobs in order to increase the wages of the jobs
women prefer.
This "comparable worth" notion has been rejected by all U.S.
legislatures and courts that have considered it, but the feminists
continue to pursue it. The Interagency Council's mission statement
reveals that the feminists are trying to enforce it through their
pals in the Labor Department's Office of Federal Contract
Compliance, using new reporting requirements and "corrective
remedies."
Another "top priority" of this group is ratification of the United
Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination Against Women. Only radical feminists could believe
the silliness that the lot of American women would be improved by
allowing a UN agency to define our rights.
Domestic violence is another major item on the Beijing agenda.
This will allow the feminists to assure that the $1.6 billion
voted by Congress for the Violence Against Women Act is treated as
feminist pork and channelled to their friends.
The National Education Association has produced a video on the
Beijing Conference called "Cornerstone for the Future" featuring
(surprise, surprise) Hillary Rodham Clinton. Designed to promote
discussions in middle schools about women as victims who need more
government services, the video was launched by Mrs. Clinton at a
middle school in Fairfax County, Virginia.
The behind-the-scenes activist who has been coordinating this
agenda is Bella Abzug, the former Congresswoman who is now head of
the Women's Environment and Development Organization, which (as
expected) is a recipient of U.S. taxpayer grants. At Feminist Expo
'96, organized by former National Organization for Women head
Eleanor Smeal and held in Washington, D.C. in February, Abzug
boasted: "You made a contract with the world's women, and that has
to be enforced. And how does it get enforced? By politics, by
political action."
Abzug is an experienced activist. In addition to her 12-point
"Contract with American Women" that includes demands for
comparable worth and affirmative action, she boasts that work is
under way to promote her platform in high schools, colleges and
universities through courses and seminars on Beijing's notion of
"gender equity."
If she runs out of U.S. taxpayer grants, she can call on the
United Nations Development Fund for Women, whose literature
announces that it is working with governments to transform
Beijing's 362 paragraphs into "national strategic plans and
programs." The 1996 UN conference in Istanbul, called Habitat II,
even wants to add the "right to housing" to the UN's Global Plan
of Action.
==========================================================
Feminists Try to Monitor Corporations
Feminists Try to Monitor Corporations The Sisters of St. Francis
in Philadelphia used their ownership of a little stock to engage
in feminist mischief-making by demanding that a Silicon Valley
company called Cypress Semiconductor select its board of directors
on the basis of racial and gender diversity. CEO T.J. Rodgers
wrote back with the put-down the nuns deserved. He rejected their
arguments as "not only unsound, but even immoral." He admonished
them that Cypress's board of directors "is not a ceremonial
watchdog, but a critical management function."
The nuns had tried to lay a guilt trip on Cypress by suggesting
that it lacks corporate "morality" and Christianity by failing to
appoint a board of directors with "equality of sexes, races, and
ethnic groups." Rodgers didn't hedge in his response. "I am
unaware," he said, "of any Christian requirements for corporate
boards; your views seem more accurately described as 'politically
correct,' than 'Christian.' " Contrary to the nuns' argument,
Rodgers explained that "a woman's view on how to run our
semiconductor company does not help us, unless that woman has an
advanced technical degree and experience as a CEO."
Sounds like common sense, doesn't it? "I believe," he said, "that
placing arbitrary racial or gender quotas on corporate boards is
fundamentally wrong." Then, Rodgers went on to argue that the
nuns' presumptuous requirements for corporate boards are
"immoral," which he defined as "causing harm to people." He
pointed out how all the retirees whose pension funds invest in
Cypress would suffer if Cypress were run on anything other than a
profit-making basis.
The letter from the nuns was so sanctimonious that it did not
allow for any possibility that a CEO could be moral if he
disagreed with their position! Rodgers told the sisters to "get
down from your moral high horse." He reiterated that "choosing a
board of directors based on race and gender is a lousy way to run
a company. We will never be pressured into it. We simply cannot
allow arbitrary rules to be forced on us by organizations that
lack business expertise."
Rodgers obviously warmed up to the challenge from the nuns' do-
good busybodyism. "The political pressure to be what is euphemized
as a 'responsible corporation' today," he said, "is so great that
it literally threatens the well being of every American." He
listed some of the other special-interest groups that are
harassing corporations about their pet issues. These include the
complaints that corporations are not sufficiently "environmentally
conscious," that they do business with certain countries, or
supply the Armed Forces, or pay their CEO too much, or give to
certain charities.
Rodgers cited a Fortune magazine report showing that the so-called
"ethical mutual funds" that invest according to a social-issues
agenda, which control $639 billion in investments, produced an
18.2 percent return in the last 12 months, while the S&P 500
returned 27.2 percent. Thus, the investors in the "ethical funds"
lost 9 percent of $639 billion, or $57.5 billion in one year,
because they invested on a social-issues basis!
Rodgers concluded by stating that he stands for "personal and
economic freedom, for free minds and free markets, a position
irrevocably in opposition to the immoral attempt by coercive
utopians to mandate even more government control over America's
economy." May his tribe increase, and may his forthright statement
embolden other CEOs to speak up, too.
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