Day: December 8, 2004

One Way to Put Those Gay Rumors to Rest

Apparently local papers have been running with rumors/allegations that Romanian Prime Minister Adrian Nastase is gay, and Nastase is fed up with it,

Nastase said: “I am not afraid of the threat of any sexual scandal created by a certain newspaper that criticises me every day anyway.

“If people from Evenimentul Zilei newspaper want me to prove to them that I have no homosexual inclinations, I will test all their wives and girlfriends to show them where my preferences really are.”

You go, Adrian.

Source:

PM offers to sleep with journalists’ wives. Ananova.

Planned Parenthood Is Back with “Choice on Earth” Christmas Cards

Planned Parenthood is once again offering its “Choice On Earth” Christmas cards for the holiday season,

I suppose you could use it to accompany a gift of a Planned Parenthood lanyard,

Or that “I had an abortion” t-shirt,

Sources:

Planned Parenthood Attacked for ‘Choice on Earth’ Cards. Kathleen Rhodes, CNSNews.Com, November 30, 2004.

Just How Backward Is Saudi Arabia?

Okay, there are sexist, misogynistic societies, and then there’s Saudi Arabia.

My wife and I got a hint of just how backward the country is many years ago when my wife gave driving lessons to several women from Saudi Arabia. Their families were scandalized enough to know that they were learning to drive, but this was compounded by the problem that they could not go to any commercial driving schools in the United States because they might have to interact with male instructors. So my wife made quite a bit of money teaching Saudi Arabian women to drive.

But you don’t realize just how far along the misogynistic scale that a society can still be until you read defenses of the system in Middle Eastern outlets, such as Arab News. Arab News’ Raid Qusti has an op-ed defending his view that efforts by Saudi women to vote are pointless and a waste of time,

We are not the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, or even Egypt. Our society is entirely different. Complete segregation of male and females in all aspects of our life is part of our culture, whether we like it or not.

The other factor we have to bear in mind is the conservative nature of Saudi Arabia. Saudi women do not appear in public, be it in the media or in public life. And when they participate in events it is segregated with women only allowed to attend. No cameras allowed.

Open all of our 11 Saudi dailies from cover to cover and you will not find a single photo of a Saudi woman. I believe that most Saudi females would not run for office, and restrictions from their families and social taboos would stop her from appearing before a camera and present her agenda. Getting a Saudi female to actually appear on television for a short interview and state her full name ? even if she has her face covered ? is an endless endeavor. Most would reject it. Both for personal reasons, because she does not want to appear in public, or for cultural reasons; that her husband or family would prevent her from doing so.

Social restrictions forbid women to appear in public. We, Saudi men, are not the ones who have come up with this culture. In fact, the majority of Saudi women want that. Whoever thinks that the majority of Saudi women want mixing and want to appear in the media or in the public eye is naïve or a fool, or both.

But it is what Quist has to say a couple paragraphs later that is most shocking (emphasis added),

I think Saudi women have more important things to concentrate on for the present. One of them is to insist their names be heard in public. Currently, the social norm is that uttering a female?s name in public is taboo. That is why all Saudi wedding cards that are distributed to male guests say, ?We would like to invite you to the marriage of the young man so and so to the daughter of so and so?. Her name is never mentioned. Her name being mentioned to men is a taboo.

This is a society that makes Medieval Europe look like “Herland”.

Source:

Why Women?s Voting Is Complicated. Raid Qusti, December 1, 2004.

Woman Who Impersonated Man Receives Suspended Sentence in Sexual Assault Case

For some reason Australia and New Zealand seem to produce a lot of bizarre cases like this. A woman who impersonated man and then carried on a sexual relationship with a minor received a suspended sentence recently despite being convicted of nine acts of sexually penetrating a child under 16 — which carried a potential jail term of 90 years according to the Herald Sun. And the kicker is that the judge cited “emotional distress” that the convicted sex offender might suffer as a reason for the light sentence.

The woman was 22, the girl was 15. The relationship lasted 2 and a half years, in which the minor apparently never realized that the “man” she was dating was, in fact, a woman. When police informed her of this, the girl had a restraining order taken out against the woman. According to the Herald Sun, “The nine charges related to one instance of oral sex and eight where a sex toy was involved.”

The woman was then convicted of all 9 charges, but was released on a suspended sentence and the Australian equivalent of parole. At sentencing, the judge noted that the woman consider herself to be a man and that serving time in a women’s prison would cause her “considerable emotional distress.”

As Australian victims rights advocate Noel McNamara put it in response to the sentence, “What about the victim’s considerable emotional distress?” McNamara urged prosecutors to appeal the sentence.

Source:

Woman posed as man to bed girl. Liam Houlihan, Herald Sun, December 1, 2004.

Wells College Students Sue to Prevent Admission of Men

Two students of women-only Wells College are suing the college to prevent it from admitting men until they graduate.

Freshman Lauren Searle-Lebel and sophomore Jennifer LeBarbera are suing the college claiming they enrolled in Wells College under the presumption that it would remain a woman’s college, and that by admitting men Wells College is breaching a contract it had with the women. They are seeking a preliminary injunction that would prevent Wells College from admitting men until 2008.

The students’ lawyer, Peter Carmen, told the Associated Press,

We’re asking for very limited relief. We just watn the women who applied to, and were accepted, by a woman’s college to be able to graduate from a women’s college.

Ann Rollo, vice president for external relations for Wells College, told the Associated Press that the college was moving forward with plans to admit men,

It is the students’ choice to pursue legal actionbut we remain focused on moving forward. Students, faculty and staff are fully engaged to make this work.

Source:

Students sue Wells College to delay admission of men. Associated Press, November 30, 2004.

Students demand ban. Indiana Daily Students, December 1, 2004.

One Child, Two “Fathers” Paying Child Support

Some men’s activists were rightly pointing to the outcome of Department of Revenue v. Ryan R. in Massachusetts as an example of just how out-of-whack the child support system is. In this case, separate courts ruled that two men declared the father of her child and required to pay child support.

Susan (no last names are given in court proceedings) cheated on her husband, Sheldon, and conceived a child by her lover. Three years later, Susan initiated divorce proceedings against her husband. Despite the fact that Sheldon was not the biological father of the child, he was nonetheless ordered to pay child support, with the court in that case ruling that,

. . . the husband is the only ‘father’ that the child has known during his life, and as the husband has cared throughout the marriage for the child and there is a bond that exists between the child and the husband . . . the husband is the ‘de facto’ father of the child.

The problem for Susan, however, was that Sheldon was also ‘de facto’ bankrupt. So she also initiated child custody efforts against the biological father of the child, Ryan. Ryan resisted such efforts, saying that the divorce proceedings in Susan and Sheldon’s marriage had already established Sheldon as the ‘de facto’ father of the child and, as such, Ryan shouldn’t be liable for child support.

A Massachusetts Appeals court rejected that argument and ordered Ryan to pay child support.

Presumably Susan is kicking herself for not figuring out a way to have the state force additional “de facto” fathers and any number of other unrelated men to contribute to caring for her child.

Sources:

Department of Revenue vs. Ryan R.. Massachusetts Appeals Court, November 2, 2004.