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)
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.
Eagle Forum
