Men are generally reluctant to hold women legally accountable. Even though feminism has done incalculable damage during the past 50 years, men too often shy away from righting wrongs. This video details how you can do your part and your duty to fight back at the tyranny feminism. The courts and lawmakers across the country are still browbeaten by feminism, but if we ALL do our parts, we can change this. Here's how!
Mr.Rebates
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
(Video) Exposing feminism interview： Dr. Henry Makow 1-4
I interview Dr.Henry Makow on the dangers of feminism and how it is used to break apart the family.
Must listen to this Audio.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
(Video) Interview with Roy Den Hollander on V.A.W.A and feminism 1-5
An interview with attorney Roy Den Hollander, on the hypocrisy that is the Violence Against Woman's Act, and how the court system is geared towards making women choose divorce and single motherhood.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Monday, November 22, 2010
Feminism is dedicated to the destruction of family
Communism and Socialism all know that they can not survive with strong families. Strong families make strong communities, and strong communities keep government power in check. Break down the families, and the door is wide open to centralizing power in government. Once families break down through divorce, welfare, cohabitation, etc. government gets more and more involved in everyday life. More and more centralized government control.
"Destroy the family," as Lenin said, "and you destroy society." Thereby he merely repeated what Socrates had said before and what Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx put into words. Lenin set out to do just that, hoping that a new society -- with the State as the ultimate father -- could be constructed.
*N* *O* *W* Action Alert -- October 20, 1999 -- Fathers' Rights Bill Advances in the House. This Action alert explains that the Father's Rights legislation before Congress is "bad for women and children" because it will "promote marriage" and "disseminat[e] information about the advantages of marriage", "promote successful parenting" and "disseminat[e] information about good parenting practices", and "help fathers and their families ... leave ... welfare". A plain reading of the Action Alert shows that when read in full context NOW will do ANYTHING to destroy marriages, families, and even children.
"The Feminists -v- The Marriage License Bureau of the State of New York...All the discriminatory practices against women are patterned and rationalized by this slavery-like practice. We can't destroy the inequities between men and women until we destroy marriage." -- From Sisterhood Is Powerful, Morgan (ed), 1970 p. 537.
... No woman should have to deny herself any opportunities because of her special responsibilities to her children. ... Families will be finally destroyed only when a revolutionary social and economic organization permits people's needs for love and security to be met in ways that do not impose divisions of labor, or any external roles, at all." -- Functions of the Family, Linda Gordon, WOMEN: A Journal of Liberation, Fall, 1969.
"No woman should be authorized to stay at home and raise her children. Society should be totally different. Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one." -- Interview with Simone de Beauvoir, "Sex, Society, and the Female Dilemma" Saturday Review, June 14, 1975, p.18
[W]omen, like men, should not have to bear children.... The destruction of the biological family, never envisioned by Freud, will allow the emergence of new women and men, different from any people who have previously existed. ? Alison Jagger - Political Philosophies of Women's Liberation: Feminism and Philosophy (Totowa, NJ: Littlefield, Adams & Co. 1977)
"In order to raise children with equality, we must take them away from families and communally raise them" Dr. Mary Jo Bane, feminist and assistant professor of education at Wellesley College and associate director of the school's Center for Research on Woman -- Do I hear YFS / DSS / CPS here??
"The care of children ..is infinitely better left to the best trained practitioners of both sexes who have chosen it as a vocation...[This] would further undermine family structure while contributing to the freedom of women." Kate Millet, Sexual Politics 178-179
?[I]f even 10 percent of American women remain full-time homemakers, this will reinforce traditional views of what women ought to do and encourage other women to become full-time homemakers at least while their children are young.... This means that no matter how any individual feminist might feel about child care and housework, the movement as a whole [has] reasons to discourage full-time homemaking.? ~ Jane J. Mansbridge, Why We Lost the ERA, p. 100 (and you wonder WHY feminism ATTACKS home-making?)
"How will the family unit be destroyed? ... the demand alone will throw the whole ideology of the family into question, so that women can begin establishing a community of work with each other and we can fight collectively. Women will feel freer to leave their husbands and become economically independent, either through a job or welfare." -- From Female Liberation by Roxanne Dunbar.
"The nuclear family must be destroyed, and people must find better ways of living together. ... Whatever its ultimate meaning, the break-up of families now is an objectively revolutionary process. ... "Families have supported oppression by separating people into small, isolated units, unable to join together to fight for common interests. ... -- Functions of the Family, Linda Gordon, WOMEN: A Journal of Liberation, Fall, 1969.
"Feminists have long criticized marriage as a place of oppression, danger, and drudgery for women." -- From article, "Is Marriage the Answer?" by Barbara Findlen, Ms magazine, May-June, 1995
"[The nuclear family is] a cornerstone of woman?s oppression: it enforces women?s dependence on men, it enforces heterosexuality and it imposes the prevailing masculine and feminine character structures on the next generation." -- Alison Jagger, Feminist Politics and Human Nature
"The first class opposition that appears in history coincides with the development of the antagonism between man and woman in monogamous marriage, and the first class oppression coincides with that of the female sex by the male." [Frederick Engels, The Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State (New York, International Publishers,1942) p.58]
"The first condition of the liberation of the wife is to bring the whole female sex back into public industry, and this in turn demands the abolition of the monogamous family as the economic unit of society." [Engels, p.67]
Patricia Ireland of NOW has referred to the Congress of the United States of America as "twisted" for supporting such notions as marriage and family in a publication titled "Father's Count Act will hurt Women and Kids", January 28, 2000, by Patricia Ireland
*N* *O* *W* Action Alert -- October 20, 1999 -- Fathers' Rights Bill Advances in the House. This Action alert explains that the Father's Rights legislation before Congress is "bad for women and children" because it will "promote marriage" and "disseminat[e] information about the advantages of marriage", "promote successful parenting" and "disseminat[e] information about good parenting practices", and "help fathers and their families ... leave ... welfare". A plain reading of the Action Alert shows that when read in full context NOW will do ANYTHING to destroy marriages, families, and even children.
From Sisterhood Is Powerful, Robin Morgan (ed), 1970, p. 537: We can't destroy the inequities between men and women until we destroy marriage.
"[F]eminists who ceaselessly inveigh against their own oppression by men (often hardly specifying its exact nature) would ignore how they themselves have oppressed ? feminine women. It oppresses a woman who could delight in domesticity to tell her that her domesticity makes her a parasitic inferior to men. It oppresses a woman who yearns to stay home with her children to tell her she is worthy only insofar as she achieves in the workplace." ~ F. Carolyn Graglia, A Brief Against Feminism, page 349
So long as we insist upon defining our identities only in terms of our work, so long as we try to blind ourselves to the needs of our children and harden our hearts against them, we will continue to feel torn, dissatisfied, and exhausted?. The guilt we feel for neglecting our children is a byproduct of our love for them. It keeps us from straying too far from them, for too long. Their cry should be more compelling than the call from the office." ~ Danielle Crittenden, What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us, page 143.
"The Feminists -v- The Marriage License Bureau of the State of New York...All the discriminatory practices against women are patterned and rationalized by this slavery-like practice. We can't destroy the inequities between men and women until we destroy marriage." -- From Sisterhood Is Powerful, Morgan (ed), 1970 p. 537.
"Families make possible the super-exploitation of women by training them to look upon their work outside the home as peripheral to their 'true' role. -- (Andrea Dworkin)
"Marriage has existed for the benefit of men; and has been a legally sanctioned method of control over women... We must work to destroy it. The end of the institution of marriage is a necessary condition for the liberation of women. Therefore it is important for us to encourage women to
leave their husbands and not to live individually with men" from "The Declaration of Feminism," November 1971.
leave their husbands and not to live individually with men" from "The Declaration of Feminism," November 1971.
... No woman should have to deny herself any opportunities because of her special responsibilities to her children. ... Families will be finally destroyed only when a revolutionary social and economic organization permits people's needs for love and security to be met in ways that do not impose divisions of labor, or any external roles, at all." -- Functions of the Family, Linda Gordon, WOMEN: A Journal of Liberation, Fall, 1969.
"Being a housewife is an illegitimate profession... The choice to serve and be protected and plan towards being a family-maker is a choice that shouldn't be. The heart of radical feminism is to change that" Vivian Gornick, feminist author, University of Illinois, "The Daily Illini," April 25, 1981.
The belief that married-couple families are superior is probably the most pervasive prejudice in the Western world. -- Judith Stacey
"Since marriage constitutes slavery for women, it is clear that the women's movement must concentrate on attacking this institution. Freedom for women cannot be won without the abolition of marriage" -- Sheila Cronan
The little nuclear family is a paradigm that just doesn't work -- Toni Morrison
The little nuclear family is a paradigm that just doesn't work -- Toni Morrison
"[M]ost mother-women give up whatever ghost of a unique and human self they may have when they 'marry' and raise children." -- From Phyllis Chesler, Women and Madness, p. 294
Barbara Ehrenreich, as quoted by Stephen Chapman, from Time -- Ms. Ehrenreich extols the "long and honorable tradition of 'anti-family' thought," waxing nostalgic for those early feminists who regarded marriage as just another version of prostitution. This deeply defective institution "can hardly be the moral foundation of everything else," she argues, pining for the day when "someone invents a sustainable alternative."
Barbara Ehrenreich in Time: Only with the occasional celebrity crime do we allow ourselves to think the nearly unthinkable: that the family may not be the ideal and perfect living arrangement after all that it can be a nest of pathology and a cradle of gruesome violence,... Even in the ostensibly "functional," nonviolent family, where no one is killed or maimed, feelings are routinely bruised and often twisted out of shape. There is the slap or the put-down that violates a child's shaky sense of self, the cold, distracted stare that drives a spouse to tears, the little digs and rivalries...
Barbara Ehrenreich in Time: Only with the occasional celebrity crime do we allow ourselves to think the nearly unthinkable: that the family may not be the ideal and perfect living arrangement after all that it can be a nest of pathology and a cradle of gruesome violence,... Even in the ostensibly "functional," nonviolent family, where no one is killed or maimed, feelings are routinely bruised and often twisted out of shape. There is the slap or the put-down that violates a child's shaky sense of self, the cold, distracted stare that drives a spouse to tears, the little digs and rivalries...
?Gramsci hated marriage and the family, the very founding blocks of a civilized society. To him, marriage was a plot, a conspiracy... to perpetuate an evil system that oppressed women and children. It was a dangerous institution, characterized by violence and exploitation, the forerunner of fascism and tyranny. Patriarchy served as the main target of the cultural Marxists. They strove to feminize the family with legions of single and homosexual mothers and ?fathers? who would serve to weaken the structure of civilized society.? Borst, William, Ph.D. American History. A Nation of Frogs, The Mindszenty Report Vol. XLV-No.1, January 2003, pg 2. (Online version at http://www.mindszenty.org/report/2003/mr_0103.pdf) Cited in the Amicus brief for Massachusetts advisory opinion on Gay Marriage, opposing gay marriage. http://bellsouthpwp.net/w/o/woodb01/011004_Mass_Brief.htm
Source: nodnc
Manipulating the Traditional Family
How the Feminazi's have manipulated the traditional family, and its value system.
Mr. Leithart serves as pulpit supply of the Reformed Heritage Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Vestavia Hills, Alabama. He is married with five children.
According to Aaron Wildavsky, the use of taxation and spending as tools of broader policy goals is the chief purpose of fiscal policy in modern welfare states. “Most money,” he writes, “is spent to affect citizen behavior rather than for direct government action.” This fact is little noted and analyzed. Yet it has become so much a part of the political atmosphere that even writers concerned with freedom accept the premise, and, instead of challenging the practice, seek to achieve their own agendas by the same means. This article is an attempt to examine the premises of “tax manipulation” from the perspective of a Christian political philosophy and to determine whether this use of tax policy is consistent with the idea of a free society.
Taxation has long been recognized as a powerful tool for achieving political, economic, and social agendas. Marx and Engels recognized the usefulness of taxation as an instrument of the proletarian revolution. In The Communist Manifesto, they summarized Communist theory in the slogan: “Abolition of private property.” Since the bourgeois system of private property was the “final and most complete expression” of “the exploitation of the many by the few,” it had to be scrapped, along with the bourgeois family, bourgeois education, and bourgeois nationalism.
The first step in this demolition of property was to be the rise to power of the proletariat, which would “use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class, and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible,” all of which would initially require “despotic inroads on the rights of property and on the conditions of bourgeois production.” To this end, they urged the adoption, among other things, of progressive tax rates and the abolition of inheritance. Private property, Marx and Engels recognized, could be undermined by tax policies, and the undermining of private property would serve their revolutionary ends.
Another giant of modern economic theory, John Maynard Keynes, also viewed fiscal policy—taxing and spending—as a tool for larger, chiefly economic, policy goals. Alfred Malabre, Jr., summarizes the Keynesian approach:
Supply-side theory also emphasizes the importance of tax policy in the achievement of economic growth. Paul Craig Roberts distinguishes between Keynesian theory, which seeks to “manage demand” through tax policy, and supply-side theory, which focuses on the incentives produced by tax cuts. Supply-side theory, Roberts argues, pays no attention, as Keynesian theory does, to aggregate demand. According to supply-side theory, tax cuts stimulate the economy because they make savings, investment, and work more profitable, regardless of aggregate demand. Despite these differences, it is still true that Keynesian and supply-side theory both see tax policy as an instrument for the advancement of larger economic goals. The Keynesian uses fiscal policy to regulate demand, while the supply- sider uses tax policy to stimulate economic growth.
Finally, tax policy is seen by many as a tool for achieving a more “democratic” egalitarian distribution of wealth. By taxing the rich at confiscatory rates, and redistributing the money to those defined as “poor” (and to the bureaucrats who run Federal programs), the federal government seeks to equalize wealth. Herbert Schlossberg has argued that this form of egalitarianism is rooted in envy:
Should Tax Law Be Changed?
Faced with these facts, some conservative writers are advocating changes in tax law that would encourage traditional family structures and large families. Allan Carlson, a pro-family conservative, proposes “a somewhat progressive income-tax structure that recognizes and supports marriage.” Specifically, “the tax system should give strong preference to children as national treasures.” To this end, “Congress should: (1) double the personal exemption, for children only, from the current $2,000 to $4,000 per child; (2) expand child-care tax credit into a universal credit set at a fixed amount of $750 per child, available to all families with a preschool child . . . ; and (3) create an additional universal Dependent-Child Tax Credit of $600 per child.” These incentives would encourage larger families, without forcing mothers to choose between family and career.
Demographer Ben Wattenberg also advocates changes in tax policies that would encourage larger families. The federal government should not only encourage large families, but should encourage women to stay home with their children. How? “Give them money. Lots of it, in order to at least partly compensate for lost earnings.”
A different argument for pro-family tax policies is offered by Bryce Christensen, writing in the Rockford Institute% Family in America newsletter, who observes that traditional, two-parent families are statistically healthier than broken families. It is unjust, therefore, for intact families to carry so heavy a burden for health care. Governments “must either impose values or impose costs,” and public policy ought to strengthen, rather than weaken, the family. Christensen maintains: “Government affirmations of marriage and legitimacy might marginally restrict the freedom of some, but government indifference to these standards will mean economic injustice for all those who safe, guard their health by making the personal sacrifices that family life requires.”
In other words, these writers urge the use of tax policies to achieve anti-feminist goals. In my judgment, the goals of these policies are laudable, and these proposals are preferable to current policies. But what about the means of achieving these goals? As a Christian, I would ask the further question of whether such policies are consistent with a Christian view of the role of civil government.
Defining the Role of Civil Government
This question requires an examination of several related issues. First, what is the function of civil government? Romans 13:1-7 is the classic scriptural text on the role of the civil ruler. According to Paul, the main function of the ruler is to execute God’s vengeance, that is, to punish wrongdoing and to “praise” those who do right. On the other hand, Scripture strongly condemns rulers who claim absolute sovereignty over their subjects. Nebuchadnezzar was reduced to a beast because of his arrogance (Daniel 4:28-37). Under God, the civil ruler has a legitimate and positive role to play in a free society, but he is not called to control the lives of law-abiding citizens.
Second, what is the nature of the family? Taking a biblical approach, we discover that in the New Testament, the Christian Church is the Christian’s true family, and his commitment to the Church is more absolute than his commitment to his blood family. Jesus said in the strongest terms that we must break our ties to our blood relatives if they conflict with our loyalty to Him and to His people (Luke 14:26). Loyalty to the blood family is not absolute. Promotion of the blood family is less crucial than the pro-family conservative maintains. This is not to say that the family is unimportant, or that we should neglect the family. Rather, it is simply to say that the Church is more important.
Further, it is clear that a person can be healthy and can make contributions to society even if he has no family. From a Christian perspective, we could note that Jesus was the perfectly healthy Man, and never married. Paul never married. The New Testament clearly presents marriage as a calling (I Corinthians 7). It is suitable for some, but unsuitable, for various reasons, for others. Family,like marriage, is a calling. Some men are called to be husbands and fathers; some are not. Some women are called to be wives and mothers; some are not. Even some married couples might not be called to become parents. Men and women are normally intended to live in families, yet men and women can live healthy lives and promote the good of others without either marrying or bearing children. Though the Bible does envision strong families, it does not view the family as a salvific institution, as some conservative writers tend to do. Leaving aside for the moment the theological and biblical arguments, it is still the case that there are many single persons who make substantial contributions to the good of society.
Once we qualify the importance of the family, we are forced to the conclusion that promoting the family ought not to be the supreme test of the rightness of a public policy. Adherence to or consistency with norms of justice is our standard.
Faith and Economics
All of this suggests that the tax policies of a civil government should not seek to manipulate people into commitments to which they are not called, or penalize them for failing to adhere to the social goals of the rulers. Christensen admits that his recommendations involve “marginal” restrictions of freedom for single men and women. But why should men and women who have been called to singlehood have their freedom restricted in any way? More basically, Christensen’s analysis tends to assume that people remain single for selfish reasons, because they do not want to make the sacrifice. But this is not true in every case. Even if it were true in the majority of cases—an unprovable assumption—tax policy would not solve the basic problem, which has more to do with faith and commitment than with economics.
Having outlined some biblical principles of both family and civil government, we can raise a more precise question: What role is the magistrate to play in the family? The one specific biblical warrant for intervention in the family by civil judges—i.e., the punishment of incorrigible juveniles—involves capital punishment of a criminal (Deuteronomy 21:18-21). There is no specific biblical warrant for other kinds of state intervention, though it is possible to extrapolate from this case law to other criminal cases. But one cannot infer from this passage a general warrant for civil oversight of family life. As a general principle, interference with family life by civil officials should be limited to punishment of criminals.
This conclusion is also supported by a consideration of the question of property rights, When tax laws promote certain uses of money or certain forms of conduct, the framers of those laws are implicitly claiming that they know best how a person’s wealth should be spent, how many children he should have, and whether his wife should work. The issue here is, who has the right to make decisions about the use of property or the structure of family life? Does the civil ruler have the right to erect obstacles in the way of certain perfectly legal behavior, or to clear the path for alternative, equally legal behavior? More bluntly (if less precisely), the question is, who is the steward of wealth and property, the civil magistrate or the family and individual? Who is the head of the family, God or Caesar?
Through their tax regulations and policies, Congress and the IRS implicitly claim the right to determine how resources are best used; they claim, in short, a right of ownership. In a free society, the choice of whether to borrow or save and invest would he left to the individual and family. Decisions about family size and structure would be made by the family, without the added pressures of tax policy. It is not the civil government’s place to encourage one result or the other.
Of course, Christensen is correct that tax policy is not neutral in relation to the family. It is either pro- or anti- family. But there is more than one way for taxation to be pro-family. Freeing the family from manipulative taxation is just as pro-family as subtle changes in tax law. Using the tax system to adjust economic and social conduct politicizes the whole of society, and is inherently, if only implicitly, totalitarian.
1. Carolyn Webber and Aaron Wildavsky, A History of Taxation and Expenditure in the Western World (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984), p. 603.
2. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, in Marx and Engels: Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy, ed. Lewis S. Feller (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1959), pp. 20-29.
3. On the Christian employment of Keynesian theory, see Inn Hedge, Baptized Inflation: A Critique of ‘Christian” Keynesianism (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1986).
4. Alfred L, Malabre, Jr., Beyond Our Means: How Reckless Borrowing Now Threatens to Overwhelm Us (New York: Vintage Books, [1987] 1988), p. 69.
5. Even Mikhail Gorbachev has begun to employ deficit spending in an effort to stimulate the Soviet economy. See Richard Parker, “Gorbanomics,” The New Republic (February 27,1989), pp. l&20.
6. Paul Craig Roberts, “’Supply-Side’ Economics: Theory and Results,” The Public Interest (Fall 1988), pp. 16-36. Opponents of supply-side economics see the “Reagan recovery” as a classic Keynesian recovery, stimulated by Federal spending huge deficits, and tax reductions.
7. Herbert Schlossberg, Idols for Destruction: Christian Faith and Its Confrontation with American Society (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1983), p. 103. The quotation from Mishan is from “A Survey of Welfare Economics, 1939-1959,” The Economic Journal (June 1960), pp. 247-48.
8. GeOrge Glider, Men and Marriage (Gretna, La.: Pelican Publishing, 1986), p. 153.
9. The practice of using taxation to protect the family is ancient. James Coffield describes the “pro-family” inheritance tax of Augustus: “Augustus legislated against celibacy, rewarding fathers of families and inflicting certain disabilities on celibates and married men without children. For example, Unmarried men could not take inheritances or legacies, except from the nearest relatives; while married men who were childless could take only half the amount.” (A Popular History of Taxation [Leaden: Longmans, 1970], p. 25)
10. Allan Carlson, “A Pro-Family Income Tax,” The Public Interest (Winter 1989), pp. 75-76. On President Bush’s proposal of a universal child credit, see “Them’s the Breaks,” The New Republic (February 27,1989), pp. 7-8. The New Republic editors laud Bush’s proposal as “an interesting synthesis—liberal in its attention to the needs of poor people, and conservative in its avoidance of ‘anti-fam-ily’ incentives for using day-care centers. Whereas the [Democratic] Act for Better Child Care would reimburse only payments made to government- certified day-care providers, the Bush proposal would leave parents free to send their child to the next-door neighbor, to grandma’s, or to an inlaw’s.” In fact, the editors rightly characterize the proposal as “really just an income supplement for poor working families with children.”
11. Ben Wattenberg, The Birth Dearth.. What Happens When People in Free Countries Don’t Have Enough Babies? (New York: Pharos Books, 1987), pp. 150-51. Wattenberg’s subtitle reveals his preoccupation with the foreign policy implications of low birth rates.
12. I consider the Family in America newsletter one of the most helpful publications available. I have learned a great deal from read-inc the essays printed there, and my challenge at this point should not be construed as an attack on the institution or its publications as a whole.
13. Contemporary efforts to support the traditional family by tax policies bear striking similarities to the practice of medieval governments of giving aid and protection to the Church.
14. Incredibly, Ben Wattenberg suggests Eastern European Communist nations as models for pro-natalist tax policies: giving money to parents who have children “is an important part of the solution that has worked at least for a decade or so with those dear Communist governments in Eastern Europe.” See The Birth Dearth, p. 150; also pp. 141-44. On pp. 143-44, Wattenberg says, “if we were to follow the workable and decent parts of the Eastern European model, and adapt them to free circumstances, we are talking about using enormous resources.” Eastern European nations provide not only cash grants to parents, but “day care, scholarships, maternal leave, [and] housing allowances.” (p. 142) Clearly, Wattenbarg is no fellow traveler, and I am far from saying that pro-natalist policies are wrong because Eastern European nations employ them. My argument is rather that the Eastern European model cannot be “adapt[ed] to free circumstances” because this model assumes an enslaved populace, whose entire Me is centrally directed.
Mr. Leithart serves as pulpit supply of the Reformed Heritage Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Vestavia Hills, Alabama. He is married with five children.
According to Aaron Wildavsky, the use of taxation and spending as tools of broader policy goals is the chief purpose of fiscal policy in modern welfare states. “Most money,” he writes, “is spent to affect citizen behavior rather than for direct government action.” This fact is little noted and analyzed. Yet it has become so much a part of the political atmosphere that even writers concerned with freedom accept the premise, and, instead of challenging the practice, seek to achieve their own agendas by the same means. This article is an attempt to examine the premises of “tax manipulation” from the perspective of a Christian political philosophy and to determine whether this use of tax policy is consistent with the idea of a free society.
Taxation has long been recognized as a powerful tool for achieving political, economic, and social agendas. Marx and Engels recognized the usefulness of taxation as an instrument of the proletarian revolution. In The Communist Manifesto, they summarized Communist theory in the slogan: “Abolition of private property.” Since the bourgeois system of private property was the “final and most complete expression” of “the exploitation of the many by the few,” it had to be scrapped, along with the bourgeois family, bourgeois education, and bourgeois nationalism.
The first step in this demolition of property was to be the rise to power of the proletariat, which would “use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class, and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible,” all of which would initially require “despotic inroads on the rights of property and on the conditions of bourgeois production.” To this end, they urged the adoption, among other things, of progressive tax rates and the abolition of inheritance. Private property, Marx and Engels recognized, could be undermined by tax policies, and the undermining of private property would serve their revolutionary ends.
Another giant of modern economic theory, John Maynard Keynes, also viewed fiscal policy—taxing and spending—as a tool for larger, chiefly economic, policy goals. Alfred Malabre, Jr., summarizes the Keynesian approach:
Keynesian theory urges that government spending be stepped up during recessions, even if an appreciable budget deficit happens to be among the consequences of such stimulative measures. A corollary to this notion is the danger of a so-called liquidity trap, which may develop when money is pumped into public hands but is saved and not spent. As savings pile up, the economy noses down on account of lackluster spending.
The Keynesian solution, as it has often been applied by policy makers in postwar American recessions, is for Uncle Sam to spend until business recovers. According to this theory, tax reduction tends to stimulate the economy, by leaving more money in the hands of consumers, while tax increases work the opposite way.Keynesian theory views fiscal policy as a tool to regulate aggregate demand.
Supply-side theory also emphasizes the importance of tax policy in the achievement of economic growth. Paul Craig Roberts distinguishes between Keynesian theory, which seeks to “manage demand” through tax policy, and supply-side theory, which focuses on the incentives produced by tax cuts. Supply-side theory, Roberts argues, pays no attention, as Keynesian theory does, to aggregate demand. According to supply-side theory, tax cuts stimulate the economy because they make savings, investment, and work more profitable, regardless of aggregate demand. Despite these differences, it is still true that Keynesian and supply-side theory both see tax policy as an instrument for the advancement of larger economic goals. The Keynesian uses fiscal policy to regulate demand, while the supply- sider uses tax policy to stimulate economic growth.
Finally, tax policy is seen by many as a tool for achieving a more “democratic” egalitarian distribution of wealth. By taxing the rich at confiscatory rates, and redistributing the money to those defined as “poor” (and to the bureaucrats who run Federal programs), the federal government seeks to equalize wealth. Herbert Schlossberg has argued that this form of egalitarianism is rooted in envy:
It has been a common assertion that envy is fostered by inequality and can be ended by equali-tarian redistribution. British economist E. J. Mishan believes that feelings of deprivation that cause envy will be eliminated in the process of equalization, and that the progressive income tax is the best way to accomplish that task. “Ideally . . . the tax should suffice to cover all the initial and subsequent claims necessary to placate everybody in the lower-income groups, and the stronger is this envy of others, the heavier must be the tax.”Some feminists have found in tax policy a powerful tool for achieving their social agenda. In the United States, tax policies tend to force families into a more egalitarian mold, even when the families don’t accept feminist ideology. George Gilder has written:
The United States is enacting many of the policies that brought sexual suicide to Sweden. Despite the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment and universal day care, the feminists are gaining their ends piecemeal. In particular, the decline in the value of the child deduction hasshifted the tax burden massively onto families with children. Through court decisions in favor of comparable worth, through the infiltration of the schools by feminist texts and teachers, through the day-care tax credits and other subsidies for the two-earner family, and through the rapid erosion of the joint income-tax return and the housewife’s right to social security, feminists are winning quietly by legal and legislative action what they cannot win in referenda.
Should Tax Law Be Changed?
Faced with these facts, some conservative writers are advocating changes in tax law that would encourage traditional family structures and large families. Allan Carlson, a pro-family conservative, proposes “a somewhat progressive income-tax structure that recognizes and supports marriage.” Specifically, “the tax system should give strong preference to children as national treasures.” To this end, “Congress should: (1) double the personal exemption, for children only, from the current $2,000 to $4,000 per child; (2) expand child-care tax credit into a universal credit set at a fixed amount of $750 per child, available to all families with a preschool child . . . ; and (3) create an additional universal Dependent-Child Tax Credit of $600 per child.” These incentives would encourage larger families, without forcing mothers to choose between family and career.
Demographer Ben Wattenberg also advocates changes in tax policies that would encourage larger families. The federal government should not only encourage large families, but should encourage women to stay home with their children. How? “Give them money. Lots of it, in order to at least partly compensate for lost earnings.”
A different argument for pro-family tax policies is offered by Bryce Christensen, writing in the Rockford Institute% Family in America newsletter, who observes that traditional, two-parent families are statistically healthier than broken families. It is unjust, therefore, for intact families to carry so heavy a burden for health care. Governments “must either impose values or impose costs,” and public policy ought to strengthen, rather than weaken, the family. Christensen maintains: “Government affirmations of marriage and legitimacy might marginally restrict the freedom of some, but government indifference to these standards will mean economic injustice for all those who safe, guard their health by making the personal sacrifices that family life requires.”
In other words, these writers urge the use of tax policies to achieve anti-feminist goals. In my judgment, the goals of these policies are laudable, and these proposals are preferable to current policies. But what about the means of achieving these goals? As a Christian, I would ask the further question of whether such policies are consistent with a Christian view of the role of civil government.
Defining the Role of Civil Government
This question requires an examination of several related issues. First, what is the function of civil government? Romans 13:1-7 is the classic scriptural text on the role of the civil ruler. According to Paul, the main function of the ruler is to execute God’s vengeance, that is, to punish wrongdoing and to “praise” those who do right. On the other hand, Scripture strongly condemns rulers who claim absolute sovereignty over their subjects. Nebuchadnezzar was reduced to a beast because of his arrogance (Daniel 4:28-37). Under God, the civil ruler has a legitimate and positive role to play in a free society, but he is not called to control the lives of law-abiding citizens.
Second, what is the nature of the family? Taking a biblical approach, we discover that in the New Testament, the Christian Church is the Christian’s true family, and his commitment to the Church is more absolute than his commitment to his blood family. Jesus said in the strongest terms that we must break our ties to our blood relatives if they conflict with our loyalty to Him and to His people (Luke 14:26). Loyalty to the blood family is not absolute. Promotion of the blood family is less crucial than the pro-family conservative maintains. This is not to say that the family is unimportant, or that we should neglect the family. Rather, it is simply to say that the Church is more important.
Further, it is clear that a person can be healthy and can make contributions to society even if he has no family. From a Christian perspective, we could note that Jesus was the perfectly healthy Man, and never married. Paul never married. The New Testament clearly presents marriage as a calling (I Corinthians 7). It is suitable for some, but unsuitable, for various reasons, for others. Family,like marriage, is a calling. Some men are called to be husbands and fathers; some are not. Some women are called to be wives and mothers; some are not. Even some married couples might not be called to become parents. Men and women are normally intended to live in families, yet men and women can live healthy lives and promote the good of others without either marrying or bearing children. Though the Bible does envision strong families, it does not view the family as a salvific institution, as some conservative writers tend to do. Leaving aside for the moment the theological and biblical arguments, it is still the case that there are many single persons who make substantial contributions to the good of society.
Once we qualify the importance of the family, we are forced to the conclusion that promoting the family ought not to be the supreme test of the rightness of a public policy. Adherence to or consistency with norms of justice is our standard.
Faith and Economics
All of this suggests that the tax policies of a civil government should not seek to manipulate people into commitments to which they are not called, or penalize them for failing to adhere to the social goals of the rulers. Christensen admits that his recommendations involve “marginal” restrictions of freedom for single men and women. But why should men and women who have been called to singlehood have their freedom restricted in any way? More basically, Christensen’s analysis tends to assume that people remain single for selfish reasons, because they do not want to make the sacrifice. But this is not true in every case. Even if it were true in the majority of cases—an unprovable assumption—tax policy would not solve the basic problem, which has more to do with faith and commitment than with economics.
Having outlined some biblical principles of both family and civil government, we can raise a more precise question: What role is the magistrate to play in the family? The one specific biblical warrant for intervention in the family by civil judges—i.e., the punishment of incorrigible juveniles—involves capital punishment of a criminal (Deuteronomy 21:18-21). There is no specific biblical warrant for other kinds of state intervention, though it is possible to extrapolate from this case law to other criminal cases. But one cannot infer from this passage a general warrant for civil oversight of family life. As a general principle, interference with family life by civil officials should be limited to punishment of criminals.
This conclusion is also supported by a consideration of the question of property rights, When tax laws promote certain uses of money or certain forms of conduct, the framers of those laws are implicitly claiming that they know best how a person’s wealth should be spent, how many children he should have, and whether his wife should work. The issue here is, who has the right to make decisions about the use of property or the structure of family life? Does the civil ruler have the right to erect obstacles in the way of certain perfectly legal behavior, or to clear the path for alternative, equally legal behavior? More bluntly (if less precisely), the question is, who is the steward of wealth and property, the civil magistrate or the family and individual? Who is the head of the family, God or Caesar?
Through their tax regulations and policies, Congress and the IRS implicitly claim the right to determine how resources are best used; they claim, in short, a right of ownership. In a free society, the choice of whether to borrow or save and invest would he left to the individual and family. Decisions about family size and structure would be made by the family, without the added pressures of tax policy. It is not the civil government’s place to encourage one result or the other.
Of course, Christensen is correct that tax policy is not neutral in relation to the family. It is either pro- or anti- family. But there is more than one way for taxation to be pro-family. Freeing the family from manipulative taxation is just as pro-family as subtle changes in tax law. Using the tax system to adjust economic and social conduct politicizes the whole of society, and is inherently, if only implicitly, totalitarian.
1. Carolyn Webber and Aaron Wildavsky, A History of Taxation and Expenditure in the Western World (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984), p. 603.
2. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, in Marx and Engels: Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy, ed. Lewis S. Feller (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1959), pp. 20-29.
3. On the Christian employment of Keynesian theory, see Inn Hedge, Baptized Inflation: A Critique of ‘Christian” Keynesianism (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1986).
4. Alfred L, Malabre, Jr., Beyond Our Means: How Reckless Borrowing Now Threatens to Overwhelm Us (New York: Vintage Books, [1987] 1988), p. 69.
5. Even Mikhail Gorbachev has begun to employ deficit spending in an effort to stimulate the Soviet economy. See Richard Parker, “Gorbanomics,” The New Republic (February 27,1989), pp. l&20.
6. Paul Craig Roberts, “’Supply-Side’ Economics: Theory and Results,” The Public Interest (Fall 1988), pp. 16-36. Opponents of supply-side economics see the “Reagan recovery” as a classic Keynesian recovery, stimulated by Federal spending huge deficits, and tax reductions.
7. Herbert Schlossberg, Idols for Destruction: Christian Faith and Its Confrontation with American Society (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1983), p. 103. The quotation from Mishan is from “A Survey of Welfare Economics, 1939-1959,” The Economic Journal (June 1960), pp. 247-48.
8. GeOrge Glider, Men and Marriage (Gretna, La.: Pelican Publishing, 1986), p. 153.
9. The practice of using taxation to protect the family is ancient. James Coffield describes the “pro-family” inheritance tax of Augustus: “Augustus legislated against celibacy, rewarding fathers of families and inflicting certain disabilities on celibates and married men without children. For example, Unmarried men could not take inheritances or legacies, except from the nearest relatives; while married men who were childless could take only half the amount.” (A Popular History of Taxation [Leaden: Longmans, 1970], p. 25)
10. Allan Carlson, “A Pro-Family Income Tax,” The Public Interest (Winter 1989), pp. 75-76. On President Bush’s proposal of a universal child credit, see “Them’s the Breaks,” The New Republic (February 27,1989), pp. 7-8. The New Republic editors laud Bush’s proposal as “an interesting synthesis—liberal in its attention to the needs of poor people, and conservative in its avoidance of ‘anti-fam-ily’ incentives for using day-care centers. Whereas the [Democratic] Act for Better Child Care would reimburse only payments made to government- certified day-care providers, the Bush proposal would leave parents free to send their child to the next-door neighbor, to grandma’s, or to an inlaw’s.” In fact, the editors rightly characterize the proposal as “really just an income supplement for poor working families with children.”
11. Ben Wattenberg, The Birth Dearth.. What Happens When People in Free Countries Don’t Have Enough Babies? (New York: Pharos Books, 1987), pp. 150-51. Wattenberg’s subtitle reveals his preoccupation with the foreign policy implications of low birth rates.
12. I consider the Family in America newsletter one of the most helpful publications available. I have learned a great deal from read-inc the essays printed there, and my challenge at this point should not be construed as an attack on the institution or its publications as a whole.
13. Contemporary efforts to support the traditional family by tax policies bear striking similarities to the practice of medieval governments of giving aid and protection to the Church.
14. Incredibly, Ben Wattenberg suggests Eastern European Communist nations as models for pro-natalist tax policies: giving money to parents who have children “is an important part of the solution that has worked at least for a decade or so with those dear Communist governments in Eastern Europe.” See The Birth Dearth, p. 150; also pp. 141-44. On pp. 143-44, Wattenberg says, “if we were to follow the workable and decent parts of the Eastern European model, and adapt them to free circumstances, we are talking about using enormous resources.” Eastern European nations provide not only cash grants to parents, but “day care, scholarships, maternal leave, [and] housing allowances.” (p. 142) Clearly, Wattenbarg is no fellow traveler, and I am far from saying that pro-natalist policies are wrong because Eastern European nations employ them. My argument is rather that the Eastern European model cannot be “adapt[ed] to free circumstances” because this model assumes an enslaved populace, whose entire Me is centrally directed.
Comparable Worth: Feminism Turning to Paternalism
One of the most controversial feminist issues of the 1990s will be comparable worth—the idea that women should be paid the same as men in jobs of comparable value. Advocates claim that pay equity would strike at the very heart of gender discrimination. Thus, the free market could be converted into an instrument of social justice, rather than one of oppression.
More specifically, advocates claim that comparable worth would eliminate the wage gap—the wage disparity whereby women who work full time are reported to receive only 60 cents for every dollar received by men. It is with the socio-economic goal of wage justice that many recent lawsuits concerning comparable worth have been launched.
Understandably, economists and businessmen have been reluctant to transform the marketplace into a tool for social reform. In general, their criticisms of comparable worth have focused on several economic issues. They contend that the wage gap has been vastly exaggerated; comparable worth will price American products out of world markets; it will overprice the labor of women, thus creating unemployment for them; and it will penalize individual employers for following a wage structure dictated by the free market.
But lurking beneath the surface of the economic debate are more fundamental disagreements. Several assumptions underlie the comparable worth controversy.
Perhaps the most basic assumption of comparable worth is that the marketplace is incapable of providing justice. What else can explain the fact that a nurse, who preserves human life, is paid less than most garbage men? To these reformers, the market has been corrupted by centuries of discrimination, and must be corrected by legislation.
Critics of comparable worth counter that the marketplace was never meant to be an arena of social reform. It is simply a coordinating mechanism that tends to balance demand with supply. The price of labor, like the price of any other commodity, doesn’t express a moral ideal, but the preferences of buyers and sellers in the market. To these critics, the marketplace is a mirror of society. To attack it is, at best, to attack the reflection of dis- crimination—not the cause or the source. It is like breaking a looking glass became it reflects too well.
Moreover, they point to instances where the free market has worked against discrimination. In South Africa, for example, government policies impose discrimination upon the market. Nevertheless, native laborers tend to go wherever there is work. Despite government fines and penalties, employers hire cheap black labor. Government regulations cannot change the economic law of supply and demand; all they can do is make it function in back alleys and underground.
Another fundamental difference in theory soon arises. Advocates of comparable worth believe that there is an inherently just wage attached to every category of labor. This “just wage” is supposed to be independent of market forces—labor is alleged to have an economic value apart from what anyone is willing tO pay for it.
Inherent Value?
The concept of inherent value is nothing new. It dates back to the medieval guilds, which determined and enforced a “just price” for the goods they produced. More recently, Karl Marx put forth a labor theory of value, by which goods had inherent worth based on the labor required to produce them. If a worker received compensation below this just price, the discrepancy was said to be stolen money.
Unfortunately for these theories, they don’t explain the world around us. If commodities have inherent worth, how can we account for the price fluctuations we see in world markets every day? Moreover, any skill is economically worthless if someone isn’t willing tO pay for it.
But the concept of inherent worth raises at least two other sticky questions: what is the measure of worth, and who will judge it? If the marketplace is an expression of discrimination, then any fair measure of worth must be independent of it. Nevertheless, advocates of comparable worth fall back upon the market price for labor as the only real standard available. Using this shaky starting point, reformers search for an objective standard of a just wage.
Perhaps the most influential of these new standards is the one generated in 1974 by the consulting firm of Norman Willis & Associates when it performed a comparable worth study for the State of Washington. This study assigned numerical scores to all classes of labor on the basis of four factors: knowledge and skills; mental demands; accountability; and working conditions. Commit-tees then added up the numerical scores of different jobs and ranked them with respect to each other. Their findings, along with “expert” testimony, were offered to the courts as proof of the need for comparable worth legislation.
But these so-called objective results depended entirely upon who the experts were and who hired them. After all, the very attempt to measure value requires a concept of what value is, and this is subjective. The subjectivity has been highlighted by discrepancies within comparable worth studies themselves. For example, in Minnesota, a registered nurse, a chemist, and a social worker were ranked as equal. In Iowa, a nurse ranked 29 percent higher than a social worker, who ranked 11 percent higher than a chemist. This is a strange objectivity.
A New Paternalism
The controversy over comparable worth is not merely between advocates and denigrators of the free market. It is within the roots of feminism itself. Feminism of the late 1960s and early 1970s called upon women to become independent—“A woman’s body, a woman% right.” Historically, the movement recognized that government legislation had been one of the major barriers to women owning land, negotiating their own contracts . . . being economic persons in their own right. But feminism in the 1990s is calling upon the government to intervene in women’s economic negotiations for the purpose of securing justice. There is a word for such intervention: paternalism. Paternalism is a word most often used with regard to mental incompetents and children. As a feminist, I shudder to see it now applied to women.
What Price Feminism?
Is feminism a dirty word? You would think so by how some people respond to the word.
Feminism is not an easy subject to write about. It has so many connotations. So many people have an opinion on it. It brings up images of women burning bras and hating men. Losing the entire point of it: equality.
What I started writing this article I put out a twitter and Facebook plea for comments about feminism. Tamsin Omond came up with a fabulous quote from J.Winterstone on lesbians: ‘they have a confidence about them that doesn’t depend on the male view. that is sexy and it is new.’
Then came the obvious, From Mason Kayne: ‘Oh why do we need another article putting men down? You’ve got the vote, you’ve got equal rights, you even ride on top half the time, what more do you want? And for the record, some men CAN multi-task.’ Hmm.
Then Forbes KB: ‘Right after you finished the washing up and the ironing I hope!’ I hope they were joking….
Darren Errol Clarke did much better: ‘I dislike the word “Feminism”! It conjures up so many wrong images. Everything should be about sharing and equality, but the name doesn’t depict that!
A warrior from the Amazon once said that she was shocked that Western women were so …weak and that they were referred to as “Flowers”! She was upset that she couldn’t “See” the flowers that they were talking about. She said, “Flowers are strong, adapting, versatile and beyond the visual. A flower can be destroyed, yet come back as beautiful as before and more than before. The humans I see before more me represent nothing more than a shadow of their true potential.”
Whilst man has a lot to answer for in history, women have come through and stamped their individuality through out. I think that when women were striving to be better than the men that suppressed them they were irrepressible, but now they have joined in the drunken madness that is today’s civilization. I hope that the mantle isn’t totally buried, as it would be nice to see more women bring true equality to the world and not the fallacy that is the modern world.’ Good points there.
Lynn Burgess: ‘It’s not about pushing a female agenda. It’s about equality.’
Caroline Gold: ‘Look to the working class women and you will see there is still disparity and it’s about more than legislature. We are not a minority. Feminism is just humanism for all. Go girl!
One of the best came from film director Richard Wright: ‘Ultimately its not about pushing a female agenda or pushing a male agenda its about pushing an agenda of tolerance and understanding no matter who it is. It’s about equality across the board not the positive discrimination of one over another, that doesn’t work because it’s still discrimination. The argument should be about how we, together as a society, create a better tomorrow and where we all fit in no matter who we are.’
Amen to that.
The London Underground is never a nice place at rush hour. A few million Londoners trying to get home means stress is high and manners non- existent. Spending a 20 minute journey with your face in some strangers armpit is common. This did not prepare me for being shoved out of the way by a man so he could sit in the last seat however. That’s right: actually pushed out out the way. Not only are manners dead, but so is chivalry.
This got me thinking about equality. I always offer to pay on dates. While discussing this with a male friend he mentioned that he thought women should always pay for themselves, after all, wasn’t that what feminism was all about? What we were fighting for all these years? Well, no. It’s not. We seem to have got the worst of both worlds. No chivalry and no equality either.
I recently read an article by James Delingpole in which he claimed, because times are tough, that only boys should be sent to public school, because his daughter could just marry a rich man. Which was more funny than offensive until I read Mary Dudley’s response that she would be sending her daughter to public school instead…so she could marry a rich man. Apparently Kate Middleton wouldn’t have had a look in if she had not been to Marlborough. Doors to manual indeed. What century is this? How Jane Austen.
We were fighting for equal pay: which we haven’t got. To have any career we want without hitting a glass ceiling. To not be though of as the weaker sex. Not better than men, just equal. With different strengths. This is all low rumbling compared to some countries. Although there is a female Prime Minister in Australia and female president in Finland, in Britain we have 126 female MPs, out of 646 members of British Parliament. Where have all the women gone?
Then there is the other thing that is holding us back: other women. I have lost count of how many times I have had another actress try and sabotage me or overheard a women bitching about me. On a set recently an older actress came up to me and said; ‘You will be just like me one day. You will lose your beauty, you will have nothing left. It all goes.’
Can we really reach our true potential if we are wasting energy stabbing each other in the back? I have an amazing group of female friends now, but it took years to find them.
Then comes all of the depressing statistics. 1 in 4 women have experienced rape or attempted rape, 95% of cases are never reported, 23% of reported cases are ‘no crimed, ‘ or thrown out, by the police. Over 66% of reported cases never make it to court and the conviction rate is a depressing 6.5% for reported cases. It seems rape is the easiest crime to get away with.
In Afghanistan the female soldiers were more afraid of their colleagues than the front line. 30 percent of female US soldiers have been raped, 71% sexually assaulted and 90% sexually harassed. Four out of five cases go unreported. Helen Benedict, author of ‘The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of women serving in Iraq’, believe rapes occur not because the soldiers are sex starved, but because they enjoy humiliating female colleagues. ‘A lot of men think women shouldn’t be in the military and feel threatened. I think a lot of sexual predators sign up because of the power they’ll wield.’ Helen goes on to say that, ‘There is a culture of sexism on the military and women are seen as sex objects.’
Then there is gendercide. 100 Million girls have disappeared. In China and Northern India 120 being born for every 100 girls. Most girls are aborted. In Iraq they stone women to death and have to be covered from head to toe. They cannot even leave the house without their male relatives. Even if they are younger than them.
So am I a feminist? I don’t care about what people think of the word, or of me for using it, as long as women are stoned to death, sold into slavery or aborted just because of their gender, the answer is yes. My name is Catherine Balavage and I am a feminist.
Facts and Figures.
3 Million women and girls are slaves in the sex trade.
An estimates 18,000 women (some as young as 14) are working as sex slaves in the UK.
Women aged 15-44 are more likely to be killed by men than cancer, malaria, car crashes and war combined.
130 million women worldwide have had their genitals mutilated.
In the past 50 years, more women have been killed because of their gender than all the men in all the wars of the 20th century.
And a beautiful quote.
Mao Zedong said “women hold up half the sky.” So don’t let it come crashing down.
http://www.unwomen.org/
Feminism is not an easy subject to write about. It has so many connotations. So many people have an opinion on it. It brings up images of women burning bras and hating men. Losing the entire point of it: equality.
What I started writing this article I put out a twitter and Facebook plea for comments about feminism. Tamsin Omond came up with a fabulous quote from J.Winterstone on lesbians: ‘they have a confidence about them that doesn’t depend on the male view. that is sexy and it is new.’
Then came the obvious, From Mason Kayne: ‘Oh why do we need another article putting men down? You’ve got the vote, you’ve got equal rights, you even ride on top half the time, what more do you want? And for the record, some men CAN multi-task.’ Hmm.
Then Forbes KB: ‘Right after you finished the washing up and the ironing I hope!’ I hope they were joking….
Darren Errol Clarke did much better: ‘I dislike the word “Feminism”! It conjures up so many wrong images. Everything should be about sharing and equality, but the name doesn’t depict that!
A warrior from the Amazon once said that she was shocked that Western women were so …weak and that they were referred to as “Flowers”! She was upset that she couldn’t “See” the flowers that they were talking about. She said, “Flowers are strong, adapting, versatile and beyond the visual. A flower can be destroyed, yet come back as beautiful as before and more than before. The humans I see before more me represent nothing more than a shadow of their true potential.”
Whilst man has a lot to answer for in history, women have come through and stamped their individuality through out. I think that when women were striving to be better than the men that suppressed them they were irrepressible, but now they have joined in the drunken madness that is today’s civilization. I hope that the mantle isn’t totally buried, as it would be nice to see more women bring true equality to the world and not the fallacy that is the modern world.’ Good points there.
Lynn Burgess: ‘It’s not about pushing a female agenda. It’s about equality.’
Caroline Gold: ‘Look to the working class women and you will see there is still disparity and it’s about more than legislature. We are not a minority. Feminism is just humanism for all. Go girl!
One of the best came from film director Richard Wright: ‘Ultimately its not about pushing a female agenda or pushing a male agenda its about pushing an agenda of tolerance and understanding no matter who it is. It’s about equality across the board not the positive discrimination of one over another, that doesn’t work because it’s still discrimination. The argument should be about how we, together as a society, create a better tomorrow and where we all fit in no matter who we are.’
Amen to that.
The London Underground is never a nice place at rush hour. A few million Londoners trying to get home means stress is high and manners non- existent. Spending a 20 minute journey with your face in some strangers armpit is common. This did not prepare me for being shoved out of the way by a man so he could sit in the last seat however. That’s right: actually pushed out out the way. Not only are manners dead, but so is chivalry.
This got me thinking about equality. I always offer to pay on dates. While discussing this with a male friend he mentioned that he thought women should always pay for themselves, after all, wasn’t that what feminism was all about? What we were fighting for all these years? Well, no. It’s not. We seem to have got the worst of both worlds. No chivalry and no equality either.
I recently read an article by James Delingpole in which he claimed, because times are tough, that only boys should be sent to public school, because his daughter could just marry a rich man. Which was more funny than offensive until I read Mary Dudley’s response that she would be sending her daughter to public school instead…so she could marry a rich man. Apparently Kate Middleton wouldn’t have had a look in if she had not been to Marlborough. Doors to manual indeed. What century is this? How Jane Austen.
We were fighting for equal pay: which we haven’t got. To have any career we want without hitting a glass ceiling. To not be though of as the weaker sex. Not better than men, just equal. With different strengths. This is all low rumbling compared to some countries. Although there is a female Prime Minister in Australia and female president in Finland, in Britain we have 126 female MPs, out of 646 members of British Parliament. Where have all the women gone?
Then there is the other thing that is holding us back: other women. I have lost count of how many times I have had another actress try and sabotage me or overheard a women bitching about me. On a set recently an older actress came up to me and said; ‘You will be just like me one day. You will lose your beauty, you will have nothing left. It all goes.’
Can we really reach our true potential if we are wasting energy stabbing each other in the back? I have an amazing group of female friends now, but it took years to find them.
Then comes all of the depressing statistics. 1 in 4 women have experienced rape or attempted rape, 95% of cases are never reported, 23% of reported cases are ‘no crimed, ‘ or thrown out, by the police. Over 66% of reported cases never make it to court and the conviction rate is a depressing 6.5% for reported cases. It seems rape is the easiest crime to get away with.
In Afghanistan the female soldiers were more afraid of their colleagues than the front line. 30 percent of female US soldiers have been raped, 71% sexually assaulted and 90% sexually harassed. Four out of five cases go unreported. Helen Benedict, author of ‘The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of women serving in Iraq’, believe rapes occur not because the soldiers are sex starved, but because they enjoy humiliating female colleagues. ‘A lot of men think women shouldn’t be in the military and feel threatened. I think a lot of sexual predators sign up because of the power they’ll wield.’ Helen goes on to say that, ‘There is a culture of sexism on the military and women are seen as sex objects.’
Then there is gendercide. 100 Million girls have disappeared. In China and Northern India 120 being born for every 100 girls. Most girls are aborted. In Iraq they stone women to death and have to be covered from head to toe. They cannot even leave the house without their male relatives. Even if they are younger than them.
So am I a feminist? I don’t care about what people think of the word, or of me for using it, as long as women are stoned to death, sold into slavery or aborted just because of their gender, the answer is yes. My name is Catherine Balavage and I am a feminist.
Facts and Figures.
3 Million women and girls are slaves in the sex trade.
An estimates 18,000 women (some as young as 14) are working as sex slaves in the UK.
Women aged 15-44 are more likely to be killed by men than cancer, malaria, car crashes and war combined.
130 million women worldwide have had their genitals mutilated.
In the past 50 years, more women have been killed because of their gender than all the men in all the wars of the 20th century.
And a beautiful quote.
Mao Zedong said “women hold up half the sky.” So don’t let it come crashing down.
http://www.unwomen.org/
Sunday, November 21, 2010
(Judgment) No 498-A after Foreign Divorce - an abuse of the process of criminal law another misuse of 498a 406
IN THE HIGH COURT OF PUNJAB AND HARYANA
AT CHANDIGARH
1. Criminal Misc. No. 37932-M of 2006
Partap Singh and another
Petitioners
Versus
State of Punjab and another
Respondents
2. Criminal Misc. No. 49931-M of 2006
Gurnam Singh
Petitioner
Versus
State of Punjab and another
Respondents
3. Criminal Misc. No. 59336-M of 2006
Gurdit Singh and another
Petitioners
Versus
State of Punjab and another
Respondents
AT CHANDIGARH
1. Criminal Misc. No. 37932-M of 2006
Partap Singh and another
Petitioners
Versus
State of Punjab and another
Respondents
2. Criminal Misc. No. 49931-M of 2006
Gurnam Singh
Petitioner
Versus
State of Punjab and another
Respondents
3. Criminal Misc. No. 59336-M of 2006
Gurdit Singh and another
Petitioners
Versus
State of Punjab and another
Respondents
Date of decision: 4th October, 2010
CORAM: HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE KANWALJIT SINGH AHLUWALIA
Present: Mr. Tarunvir Vashist, Advocate for Mr. Rajesh Gupta, Advocate for the petitioners. Ms. Sudeepti Sharma, DAG Punjab,
for the State.
None for respondent No.2.
KANWALJIT SINGH AHLUWALIA, J. (ORAL)
By this common order, three petitions viz. (1) Criminal Misc. No.37932-M of 2006 preferred by Partap Singh-father-in-law and Kulwant Kaur-mother-in-law (2) Criminal Misc. No.49931-M of 2006 preferred by Criminal Misc. Nos. 37932-M; 49931-M and 59336-M of 2006 2 Gurnam Singh-brother of the husband and (3) Criminal Misc. No.59336-M of 2006 filed by Gurdit Singh-elder brother of father-in-law and Tejinder Singh-husband shall be decided together.
FIR in these cases was lodged by Kulwinder Kaur, who was a citizen of United Kingdom. As per the FIR, she was resident of 7, Scribers Lane, Har Green Birmingham B-280 NY. The marriage of complainant-Kulwinder Kaur was solemnized with Tejinder Singh at Ludhiana on 8th May, 2004. It is not disputed that for solemnizing the marriage, complainant-Kulwinder Kaur came to India only one month before her marriage and thereafter she left for United Kingdom. Thereafter, immigration of her husband-Tejinder Singh was sponsored and he also left for United Kingdom on 24th October, 2004. Counsel for the petitioners has referred to the divorce proceedings (Annexures P-10 to P-14) between the husband and wife initiated and concluded in the Uxbridge County Court and has stated that all property and entrustment disputes between the parties have been resolved by the Matrimonial County Court while granting divorce. The matter has been investigated by the Ludhiana police. It is stated that the only allegation against the petitioners is that the dowry articles were entrusted to them in India and during the stay of complainant-Kulwinder Kaur in India, her husband and his relations had misbehaved with the complainant and had demanded a car. It is stated in the report under Section 173 Cr.P.C. (Annexure P-9) that Tejinder Singh reached United Kingdom on 24th October, 2004 and resided there with his father-in-law. On 24th February, 2005, he is stated to have left the house for an unknown place. For search of Tejinder Singh, the complainant- Kulwinder Kaur and her father came to India and a Panchayat was called, where on 17th August, 2005, mother-in-law, father-in-law, brother-in-law and uncle-in-law of the complainant had demanded dowry articles. The Criminal Misc. Nos. 37932-M; 49931-M and 59336-M of 2006 3 police after enquiry, had deleted the offence punishable under Sections 364 and 382 IPC, however they came to a conclusion that offence punishable under Sections 406, 498-A and 323 IPC was made out against the accused.
This is one of those typical cases, where after the marriage, bride and bridegroom have gone abroad. The wife is a citizen of United Kingdom. She had facilitated immigration of her husband, who had married a Non-Resident-Indian wife only for the purposes of his settlement in a foreign country. Having reached abroad, he deserted his wife and had obtained a divorce. The hurt of a Non-Resident-Indian wife that she has been used as a conduit for immigration, can be well understood. In this context, the allegations in the FIR have been examined. This Court cannot become oblivious of the fact that the husband and wife, after obtaining divorce, parted their ways and are residing happily in United Kingdom. The property and entrustment of the articles was a subject matter before the Uxbridge County Court, which has granted divorce. A similar controversy was examined by Hon'ble the Apex Court in 'Harmanpreet Singh Ahluwalia and others v. State of Punjab and others' (2009) 7 Supreme Court Cases 712, wherein it was held as under:
"32. Furthermore, the larger part of offence, if any, has been committed only in Canada. Why the father of Respondent 3 had to come from Canada to Jalandhar to lodge an FIR is difficult to comprehend. Respondent 3 and the first informant do not say that the inquiry report submitted by the Superintendent of Police on the representation made by Appellant 2 was incorrect. It has also not been stated that as to on what material, the chargesheet had been submitted. we, in the peculiar facts and circumstances of this case, have absolutely no doubt in our mind that the allegations contained in the FIR had been made with an ulterior motive to harass Criminal Misc. Nos. 37932-M; 49931-M and 59336-M of 2006 4 the appellants. Continuance of the criminal proceeding against them would, therefore, amount to abuse of process of the Court."
Admittedly, Tejinder Singh had left the house in United Kingdom, thereafter, as to why the complainant-Kulwinder Kaur and her father came to India in search of Tejinder Singh and then they met the relations of husband where they made a demand of dowry articles? This is something which this Court cannot comprehend. This kind of allegations are not only unnatural, improbable and unconvincing but have been coined only as an abuse of the process of criminal law. It is another case where provisions of Sections 406 and 498-A IPC have been misused. The very fact that complainant aggrieved wife had stayed in India for less than one month and husband cohabited with complainant wife for a period of about six months i.e. from October 2004 to February 2005 in United Kingdom and thereafter, obtained divorce from County Court in United Kingdom settling all disputes is sufficient to hold that proceedings in the present case should be quashed. Hence, the above said three petitions are hereby accepted and the impugned FIR along with all subsequent proceedings is quashed.
[KANWALJIT SINGH AHLUWALIA]
JUDGE
October 4, 2010
Marital stress drives more men to suicide than women
Mumbai: Has the equation in the war of the sexes changed
Strange
it may sound,but the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) figures
released by a city-based mens rights advocacy group shows that the
number of married men ending their lives is far more than their female
counterparts. And the group claims that the men to women suicide ratio of
65:35 indicates that it is the men can now don the tag of the oppressed
sex.
The data was revealed on the World Mens Day by the Indian
Family Foundation,a global movement started by the families of Indian
men facing abuse in the hands of their wives.According to the figures
mentioned in the report in 2008,57,639 married men across the country
killed themselves,compared to 30,224 married women.Every nine minutes,an
Indian husband commits suicide.Men contribute to 92 % taxes but face
100% ignorance, an organization member said.
The organization pointed
out that most of the men who ended their lives were often ridiculed as
being weak and irresponsible and denied any support or counselling. No
one believes that men can be victims of domestic violence.But a survey
shows that in the past 12 years,1,70,000 married men have committed
suicide,as they could no longer bear the domestic strife, Zaveri added.
The
organization blames the phenomenon on the fact that the world has
turned a deaf ear to all the complaints coming from men.There is no
limit to the expectations from a man.The unaddressed domestic abuse and
family disputes are taking a huge toll on married men.No one shares
their pain and there is no social support system for these distressed
men, an organization member said.In spite of the suicide of the doctor
from Lucknow who left behind a suicide note accusing his wife and
in-laws of cruelty,no action has been taken by the police.
The group
is now urging the government to start a ministry for men and also a
National Commission for Men on the lines of the ones that exist for
women.If there can be a government organization for women,children and
even animals,we deserve to have one as well, Zaveri said.
Source: TNN
Strange
it may sound,but the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) figures
released by a city-based mens rights advocacy group shows that the
number of married men ending their lives is far more than their female
counterparts. And the group claims that the men to women suicide ratio of
65:35 indicates that it is the men can now don the tag of the oppressed
sex.
The data was revealed on the World Mens Day by the Indian
Family Foundation,a global movement started by the families of Indian
men facing abuse in the hands of their wives.According to the figures
mentioned in the report in 2008,57,639 married men across the country
killed themselves,compared to 30,224 married women.Every nine minutes,an
Indian husband commits suicide.Men contribute to 92 % taxes but face
100% ignorance, an organization member said.
The organization pointed
out that most of the men who ended their lives were often ridiculed as
being weak and irresponsible and denied any support or counselling. No
one believes that men can be victims of domestic violence.But a survey
shows that in the past 12 years,1,70,000 married men have committed
suicide,as they could no longer bear the domestic strife, Zaveri added.
The
organization blames the phenomenon on the fact that the world has
turned a deaf ear to all the complaints coming from men.There is no
limit to the expectations from a man.The unaddressed domestic abuse and
family disputes are taking a huge toll on married men.No one shares
their pain and there is no social support system for these distressed
men, an organization member said.In spite of the suicide of the doctor
from Lucknow who left behind a suicide note accusing his wife and
in-laws of cruelty,no action has been taken by the police.
The group
is now urging the government to start a ministry for men and also a
National Commission for Men on the lines of the ones that exist for
women.If there can be a government organization for women,children and
even animals,we deserve to have one as well, Zaveri said.
Source: TNN
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)