Conference turris::womannotes-v3

    I'm sure that many people have already heard that one of the
    regulars on Saturday Night Live has declined to appear on the
    upcoming show to be guest hosted by Andrew "Dice" Clay (is that
    Nora Dunn?), but I just heard on the radio that Sinead O'Connor
    has also cancelled for the same reason.
    
    I don't remember the exact wording, but she didn't feel it
    appropriate to have a woman singing songs based an a woman's
    experiences following an opening monologue by him.
    
    [question for moderators...is there a following up topic for people
    to discuss news items?  this topic is reserved for clips only,
    no discussion]
    
    

    Unexpected side effect of AIDS: A news article in the Colorado Springs
    paper revealed the fact that the price of balloons has skyrocketed.
    It's gone up 40%. Why?, you ask. It's because there is a severe latex
    shortage due to the increased use of surgical gloves, condoms and
    dental damns. It also mentioned that latex whoopie cusions are a thing
    of the past. It's just too expensive to make them of latex anymore. The
    new rubber ones "don't make the same impact, but they get the point
    across" according to a novelty dealer in the area. liesl

From:	ERIS::CALLAS "This message sent with 100% recycled bits  03-Jul-1990 1129"  3-JUL-1990 11:36:54.98
To:	FOLKSTAR::
CC:	
Subj:	Pro-life Tips for Breeding Women

Date: Mon, 2 Jul 90 09:09:50 EDT
From: Christopher Maeda <cmaeda@a.gp.cs.cmu.edu>
Reply-To: cmaeda@cs.cmu.edu
To: subgenius@mc.lcs.mit.edu
Subject: Pro-life Tips for Breeding Women
 
Subject: Pro-life Tips for Breeding Women
Date: 29 Jun 90 01:59:38 GMT
 
Regarding LA's new anti-abortion bill, which has passed both 
houses and now awaits the governor's signature: 
 
"Rep. Carl Gunther, D-Deville, a farmer, said that even in the 
case of incest, a pregnancy should not be interrupted.  
'Inbreeding is how we get championship horses.'"
 
       --- from the New Orleans _Times_Picayune_ (6/28/90)

	One of the articles in the pending Louisiana anti-abortion
	legislation provides for up to a ten-year prison term for the
	use of an IUD.

					clb

From the July 13, 1990 Groton [MA] Herald:

Groton Man Arrested On Indecent Exposure Charges

A Groton man was arrested on several charges of indecent exposure and sexual
harassment by Groton police on June 19. According to Groton police, the man
allegedly sent a photograph of himself in the nude to a female clerk who works
in a store in town. The clerk complained to police and acting upon this
complaint police made the arrest.

The man was arrested on four different charges: Open and Gross Lewdness,
Indecent Exposure, Disseminating Obscene Matter, and Annoying a Person of the
Opposite Sex.

He was arraigned in Ayer District Count and a pre-trial hearing has been
scheduled for July 18. Each of the offenses carries different sentences. If the
man pleads guilty to the charges, he could face a maximum sentence of five
years in a state prison or a fine of up to $10,000.

    Associated Press - Gainsville Fla.

    Couples who have violent relationships, common interests or several
    children tend to have sex more often than other couples, a sociologist
    says.

    Next to youth, shared interests were the greatest indicator of sexual
    frequency in a marriage, said the University of Florida researcher who
    based the study on a nationwide surrvey of 5,292 married couples.

    "Whether it's something simple as taking walks together or enjoying the
    same hobbies, sharing activities outside the bedroom is a big predictor
    of how often married couples have sex", sociologist Denise Donnelly
    said.

    Donnelly said she found that partners violent marrigaes had sexual
    relations more often than other couples.

    "People in these marriages may have intercourse more because of a
    honeymoon period that follows each outbreak of violence," she said.
    "These couples may not only fight with a passion, but nake up with a
    passion as well."

    Another explanation might be that people who are physically expressive
    in showing their anger might be physically expressive in other areas of
    their lives, including their sexual relationships., she said.

    Donnelly also found that people who lived together before marriage had
    more active sex lives than couples who didn't.

    "Since these people are more individualistic and less prone to follow
    society's expectations, they also be less likely to have "normal"
    levels of coital frequency," she said.

    Income, education, race and palce of residence had no bearing on how
    often a couple had sex. But, contrary to other studies, Donnelly found
    that couples with more children led the most active love lives.

    "Other researchers have thought that the more children present, the
    fewer the uninterupted opportunities for intercourse," Donnelly said,
    "In reality, the more one has intercourse, the greater the odds of
    conceiving a child, and the more children one has."

    Not surprisingly, she said, couples with school-aged children said they
    had more sex than than those with younger children.

[This essay, by Hugh Gallagher, won first prize in the humor category
of the 1990 Scholastic Writing Awards.  It appeared in the May issue
of Literary Cavalcade, a magazine of contemporary fiction and student
writing published by Scholastic in New York City.  Gallagher, who is
eighteen, grew up in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, and will attend New
York University this fall.]

3A. ESSAY

IN ORDER FOR THE ADMISSIONS STAFF OF OUR COLLEGE TO GET TO KNOW YOU,
THE APPLICANT, BETTER, WE ASK THAT YOU ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTION:
ARE THERE ANY SIGNIFICANT EXPERIENCES YOU HAVE HAD, OR ACCOMPLISHMENTS
YOU HAVE REALIZED, THAT HAVE HELPED DEFINE YOU AS A PERSON?

I am a dynamic figure, often seen scaling walls and crushing ice.  I
have been known to remodel train stations on my lunch breaks, making
them more efficient in the area of heat retention.  I translate ethnic
slurs for Cuban refugees, I write award-winning operas, I manage time
efficiently. Occasionally, I tread water for three days in a row.

I woo women with my sensuous and godlike trombone playing, I can pilot
bicycles up severe inclines with unflagging speed, and I can cook
Thirty-Minute Brownies in twenty minutes.  I am an expert in stucco, a
veteran in love, and an outlaw in Peru.

Using only a hoe and a large glass of water, I once single-handedly
defended a small village in the Amazon Basin from a horde of ferocious
army ants.  I play bluegrass cello, I was scouted by the Mets.  I am
the subject of numerous documentaries.  When I'm bored, I build large
suspension bridges in my yard.  I enjoy urban hang gliding.  On
Wednesdays, after school, I repair electrical appliances free of
charge.

I am an abstract artist, a concrete analyst, and a ruthless bookie.
Critics worldwide swoon over my original line of corduroy evening
wear. I don't perspire.  I am a private citizen, yet I receive fan
mail.  I have been caller number nine and have won the weekend passes.
Last summer I toured New Jersey with a traveling centrifugal-force
demonstration. I bat .400.  My deft floral arrangements have earned me
fame in international circles.  Children trust me.

I can hurl tennis rackets at small moving objects with deadly
accuracy.  I once read Paradise Lost, Moby Dick, and David Copperfield
in one day and still had time to refurbish an entire dining room that
evening.  I know the exact location of every food item in the
supermarket.  I have performed covert operations for the CIA.  I sleep
once a week; when I do sleep, I sleep in a chair.  While on vacation
in Canada, I successfully negotiated with a group of terrorists who
had seized a small bakery.  The laws of physics do not apply to me.

I balance, I weave, I dodge, I frolic, and my bills are all paid. On
weekends, to let off steam, I participate in full-contact origami.
Years ago I discovered the meaning of lifebut forgot to write it down.
I have made extraordinary four-course meals using only a Mouli and a
toaster oven. I breed prize-winning clams.  I have won bullfights in
San Juan, cliff-diving competitions in Sri Lanka, and spelling bees at
the Kremlin.  I have played Hamlet, I have performed open-heart
surgery, and I have spoken with Elvis.

But I have not yet gone to college.

From:	DECSRC::"risks@csl.sri.com" "RISKS Forum  14-Aug-90 0925 PDT" 14-AUG-1990 14:48:40.63
To:	RISKS-LIST:;@decpa.pa.dec.com
CC:	
Subj:	RISKS DIGEST 10.20 

RISKS-LIST: RISKS-FORUM Digest  Tuesday 14 August 1990   Volume 10 : Issue 20
 
        FORUM ON RISKS TO THE PUBLIC IN COMPUTERS AND RELATED SYSTEMS 
   ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy, Peter G. Neumann, moderator
 
[...]
 
Date: Mon, 13 Aug 90 21:20:17 PDT
From: allans@ebay.sun.com (Allan "Just say NO to postcard requests!" Meers)
Subject: Computer noise linked to stress -- computers vs. women
 
Dr. Caroline Dow and Dr. Douglas Covert, assistant professors of
communication at the University of Evansville Indiana, believe they
have linked noise made by video display terminals with stress symptoms
in women, who hear high-frequency sounds better than men.
 
The AP article, reported in the Aug 12, 1990 San Jose Mercury News (all the
news we twist to fit*), reports that the couple first became interested when Dow
noticed the subconciously irritating effect that a university computer she was
using had on her.
 
Tests on 41 students in April 1987 showed that the subjects exhibited the
stress symptoms of speeded up work and a doubling of their error rate when
doing clerical work in a room where the high-pitched sound was created.  Dow
said, "We can all work through that sound, but it is tiring and distracting."
They hope their research will be expanded on by others, possibly linking the
noise with headaches, tension, miscarriages, and other health problems.
 
Men are rarely bothered by the 16 kilohertz pure-tone sound, as they generally
cannot hear frequencies above 15kHz, while women can hear up to around 18
kilohertz, Dow also said.  Dow and Covert were to present their findings at the
Minneapolis national convention for Education in Journalism and Mass
Communications.
 
   [Also noted by Andrew E. Birner, Zenith.  
   NOTE * I thought it was "All the news that fits we print."  PGN]
 

From:	WMOIS::REINKE "SSB Configuration Control  17-Aug-1990 1353" 17-AUG-1990 13:54:02.95
To:	BONNIE
CC:	
Subj:	IF THIS IS TRUE, WOW.......!  DR

From:	WMOIS::MCGINNESS "17-Aug-1990 1334" 17-AUG-1990 13:52:58.38
To:	@DIS:SANE
CC:	
Subj:	I heard this on NPR as well...

From:	SYZYGY::SOPKA "Smiling Jack  17-Aug-1990 1044" 17-AUG-1990 10:53:51.27
To:	@FRIENDS
CC:	
Subj:	amazing statistic on working women . . . . 

From:	CSS::LAMIA "Walt Lamia, EIS/E, BTH1-1/B6, DTN 264-3265" 17-AUG-1990 08:43:42.68
To:	$DESP
CC:	SOPKA,LAMIA
Subj:	Heard on Charles Osgood's radio program this morning..for Desperado

    According to an OSHA statistician, the leading cause of work-related
    injuries to women [in the U.S., I suppose] is....

	...homicide.

From: clarinews@clarinet.com
Newsgroups: clari.news.interest.people,clari.news.sex
Subject: Rob Lowe sex video suit settled


	ATLANTA (UPI) -- A federal lawsuit alleging actor Rob Lowe seduced a
16-year-old girl into appearing in a pornographic video two years ago
was settled out of court, it was reported Saturday.
	The lawsuit was filed by the mother of Jan Parsons, the Marietta,
Ga., teenager featured in Lowe's infamous pornographic video made in an
Atlanta hotel room during the 1988 Democratic National Convention.
	A consent order obtained Friday indicates the two sides agreed July
3 not to discuss terms of the settlement, the Atlanta
Journal-Constitution said.
	The plaintiff's attorney would not say if the settlement included a
monetary award, adding, ``You can draw your own conclusions.''
	The suit, filed in May 1989 by Lena Arlene Wilson, claimed Lowe
seduced her daughter into taking part in sex scenes with the actor and
with another woman for the video.
	The suit, seeking unspecified damages, was filed under the state
seduction statute that gives parents the right to seek damages if a
teenage girl is enticed into sexual intercourse.
	Attorneys for Lowe contended the law was unconstitutional. The main
issue in the suit was if Wilson, who did not have custody of her
daughter, could sue under the law.
	Lowe, 26, while denying liability for seducing Parsons, settled a
claim last fall brought by her father for an undisclosed amount.
	Lowe, star of the movies ``St. Elmo's Fire'' and ``About Last
Night,'' faced possible criminal charges related to the incident. But
last summer he agreed to perform two years of community service in Los
Angeles to avoid prosecution in Fulton County for sexual exploitation of
a minor, punishable by a maximum of 20 years in prison and a $100,000
fine.

    
    From the Monday, August, 13 1990, edition of the Christian Science 
    Monitor.

    Abortion Issue:  More Female Pols a Result?

    By Maura Casey
 
    Ronald Reagan started a revolution 10 years ago when he campaigned 
    for president saying that government should get off people's backs.
        That philosophy may be taking a turn the Gipper never expected. 
    It may influence how women vote, particularly when it comes to 
    abortion.
        A study suggests in states where abortion is a major election 
    issue, voters who are ambivalent about abortion are more likely to 
    vote for pro-choice candidates.
        Such voters do no necessarily identify with feminism, and often 
    are not comfortable with abortion.  But they are a lot less 
    comfortable with the government interferring with their lives.
        Debra Dobson, assistant professor at Rutgers University's 
    Eagleton Institute of Politics, studied the only state elections for
    governor held last year -- those in New Jersey and Virginia.  They 
    were the first gubernatorial elections held after the Supreme 
    Court's WEBSTER decision giving states more authority to restrict 
    abortion.
        Researchers conducted interviews with 4,400 registered voters 
    and 90 legislative candidates.  Interviewers asked voters if they 
    favored or opposed government restrictions on abortions, then asked 
    voters seven questions to analyze their attitudes on the subject.
        What the polling data revealed was that the people in the middle
    -- those who feel conflict on the issue of abortion -- were likely 
    to be pro-choice, if only to keep government off their backs.
        "There is a possibility that Ronald Reagan's revolution made it 
    possible for the resurgence of the pro-choice side, by making people
    less comfortable with government restrictions and government 
    intruding in people's private decisions," said Dobson.
        The polling data also showed that although the Republican party 
    is most strongly opposed to abortion, Republican voters -- 
    particularly women -- were willing to cross party lines and vote for
    Democrats if the candidates were pro-choice.
        The pro-choice candidates won the governor's races in New Jersey
    and Virginia.  But in Virginia the issue was more heavily 
    emphasized.  Unsurprisingly, the women there came out to vote in 
    droves.
        Dobson said a Republican legislator from Northern Virginia 
    remarked on the heavy turnout of women.  The legislator said, "On 
    election day, between 6 and 7 p.m., the single women going to the 
    polls made a wall of women."
        Two states does not a trend make.  But the abortion issue 
    directly affects women more than men, simply because the legislative
    wrangling involves restricting females.  So it is, at its most 
    basic, a woman's fight.  And I've wondered whether the issue would 
    finally galvanize more women into entering the political arena.  
    Women make up only 5 percent of Congress and 17 percent of state 
    legislatures nationwide.
        Dobson says more women are running in some states, but the 
    reasons why won't be clear until she has a chance to study the 
    elections and the results.  She did say she has been contacted by a
    journalist in Idaho who said that 25 percent more women are running 
    for politcal office there.  More women are running for the Idaho 
    state legislature, according to the Idaho secretary of state's 
    office.  But the increase is less dramatic -- about a 12 percent 
    increase.
        Abortion is a hot issue in Idaho, since last March the governor 
    vetoed a bill banning abortion.  The legislation would have 
    permitted abortion only in cases of incest or rape, but, according 
    to the New York Times, the bill would have given the father -- the 
    rapist -- the authority to get a court order to block the abortion,
    thus forcing his victim to carry the child to term.  (I hadn't 
    realized the Ayatollah Khomeini was a member of the Idaho 
    legislature.)
        Pennsylvania, which now has the most restrictive abortion law in
    the 50 states, also is seeing an unusual surge of political activity
    among women.  Pennsylvania ranks 46th out of 50 states and 
    Washington, D.C., in numbers of women holding political office, 
    according to the Eagleton Institute.  But Pennsylvania's ranking may
    soon improve.  Fifty-four women have survived primaries and are 
    running for the Pennsylvania Senate and the statehouse, 25 percent 
    more than ran on 1986.
        The issue of abortion is miserable and divisive.  But some good 
    may come of it if the issue sparks a "wall of women" into not only 
    voting, but also running -- and winning -- elective office.

    Maura Casey is associate editorial page editor for The Day of New 
    London, Conn.

From the Washington Post, Tuesday August 14, front page.  

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

FEW WOMEN, MINORITIES AT THE TOP
Survey Finds No Gain in Executive Positions in Past Decade
By Lori Silver

	White males still hold more than 95 percent of the top management jobs
at the country's largest corporations, a figure that remains virtually
unchanged despite a decade of social change, according to a new survey on the
American work force released yesterday.

	The study by the University of California at Los Angeles Graduate
School of Management and Korn/Ferry, a corporate recruiter, surveyed close to
700 top executives around the country and compared the findings with a similar
study they conducted in 1979. Since 1979, neither women nor minorities
increased their ranks at the level of senior vice president or above by more
than 2 percentage points, the study found.

	Experts on management and workplace issues said they were astonished at
the study's revelation: that 10 years of growing corporate awareness of the
importance of promoting women and minorities have yielded little concrete
progress.

	Several said it comes as further evidence that many companies still
have an invisible ceiling above which women and minorities find it difficult to
climb.

	"I think there's a clearly a glass ceiling," said Barbara Franklin, a
District businesswoman who serves on the board of directors of such companies
as Dow Chemical Co., Westinghouse Electric Corp. and Aetna Life & Casualty.
"There's a lot of subtle discrimination," she said.

	In the most recent study, researchers at UCLA sent questionnaires to
more than 4,000 senior executives at the nation's 1,000 largest service and
industrial companies, asking them questions about their own gender and race,
and about the makeup of their companies' top ranks. They received about 700
responses, a number that management experts said was sizable. The researchers
followed a similar procedure in their 1979 survey. Alice Eagly, an expert on
gender and workplace issues at Purdue University, said women's and minorities'
failure to penetrate the executive suite may in part stem from the fact that
these groups only recently have made significant inroads into middle
management. It may be some time before these people gain the experience current
management thinks they need to hold executive level positions, she said.

	"There's still some feeling on the part of the highest management that
women and minorities don't have the same qualifications," Eagly said.

	Although the 1989 survey results showed little change at top management
levels since the first study, executives showed an increasing willingness to
accept women into their ranks. Sixty-eight percent of those responding to the
survey said they believed women would hold senior management positions by the
year 2000.

	"Corporations are learning that it's bad to ignore women and
minorities, both because they wield growing economic clout and because they
represent a rich pool of managerial talent," said J. Clayburn La Force, deand
of the John E.  Anderson Graduate School of Management at UCLA.

	"Another ten years from now, I think we'll see much more diversity in
the executive population," La Force said.

	If Marriott Corp., with 200,000 employees, can be considered a
bellwether, then corporations have many women and minorities waiting in the
pipeline to be promoted. "We have more minorities and females coming up the
line than we ever have had," said Cliff Ehrlich, Marriott's senior vice
president of human resources.

	Ehrlich said that women and minorities make up about 10 percent of
Marriott's top management.

	According to the study, women made slightly more progress than
minorities over the past decade. About 3 percent of those questioned in the
latest survey were women, compared with 0.5 percent in 1979. Less than 1
percent identified themselves as black, Hispanic or Asian in the latest survey.
The numbers are virtually identical to 1979: At that time, 99 percent of the
executives said they were white.

	It's a little bit surprising that there hasn't been more break-through"
for women and minorities, said Ed O'Brien, an assistant professor of psychology
at Marywood College in Scranton, Pa., who studies management issues. "There're
barriers imposed if you don't share the same interests or follow the same
football teams."

From our personnel rep, posted with her permission.

--David


From:	ULTRA::ALLEN "Donna Maxfield Allen - Personnel - 293-5602  23-Aug-1990 1501"
To:	@LIPNER.DIS,@HOLZ.DIS,@JEFFERY.DIS,@HAMILTON.DIS
CC:	RUTH,ALLEN
Subj:	FYI - FEDERAL "GLASS CEILING INITIATIVE"

(FORWARDS DELETED)

From:	NAME: RALPH GILLESPIE @MLO          
	FUNC: CORP MATERIALS                  
	TEL: 223-5900                         <GILLESPIE.RALPH AT A1 at MEMIT1 
at MLO>
To:	See Below


This article was in the USA Today Money paper July 31, 1990 issue.  It's 
quite an interesting article. 



BY
JULIA LAWLOR
USA TODAY

THE LABOR DEPARTMENT IS TAKING AIM AT THE BUSINESS WORLD'S "GLASS 
CEILING" BY SENDING ITS OWN INVESTIGATORS INTO CORPORATE EXECUTIVE 
SUITS.

LABOR SECRETARY ELIZABETH DOLE SAYS A FEDERAL "GLASS CEILING INITIATIVE" 
WILL ATTACK THE SUBTLE DISCRIMINATION THAT BARS WOMEN AND MINORITIES 
FROM THE TOP LEVELS OF MANAGEMENT.  SINCE A PILOT PROGRAM BEGAN IN THE 
SPRING EIGHT CORPORATIONS HAVE BEEN TARGETED.  DOLE DECLINED TO IDENTIFY 
THEM.

THE FORMAL PROGRAM, DUE TO START THIS FALL, THREATENS TO CUT OFF ACCESS 
TO FEDERAL CONTRACTS FOR ANY COMPANY FOUND TO BE DISCRIMINATING AT THE 
SENIOR MANAGEMENT LEVEL.  DOLE CAN ALSO TRY TO FORCE FIRMS TO GIVE BACK 
PAY FOR VICTIMS OF BIAS.  THE PROGRAM GOVERNS MORE THAN 27 MILLION 
WORKERS AT 100,000 FIRMS WITH $200 BILLION IN FEDERAL CONTRACTS, 
INCLUDING MOST OF THE FORTUNE 1000.  NO QUOTAS WILL BE SET.

DOLE CALLED THE ISSUE "A TOP PRIORITY: AND SAID THE DEPARTMENT WOULD 
EXAMINE COMPANIES' TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS, ROTATIONAL 
ASSIGNMENTS AND REWARD STRUCTURES - "ALL THE INDICATORS OF UPWARD 
MOBILITY IN CORPORATE AMERICA."  EQUAL OPPORTUNITY CLAUSES IN FEDERAL 
CONTRACTS PERMIT THE GOVERNMENT TO AUDIT EMPLOYMENT PRACTICES.

"THERE CAN BE LITTLE DOUBT THAT A WOMAN OR MINORITY, NO MATTER HOW 
WELL-SCHOOLED, WHAT THEIR WAGE OR HOW THICK THEIR PORTFOLIO, ENTERS MANY 
BUSINESS ORGANIZATIONS WITH LIMITED OR NO HOPE OF REACHING THE TOP", 
DOLE WROTE IN RESPONSE TO WRITTEN QUESTIONS.

TO DATE, SENIOR MANAGEMENT POSITIONS HAVE BEEN PRACTICALLY THE SOLE 
PROVINCE OF WHITE MALES - LABOR OFFICALS SAY WOMEN AND MINORITIES 
REPRESENT ABOUT 30% OF MIDDLE MANAGERS BUT LESS THAN 1% OF SENIOR 
EXECUTIVES.  ONLY THREE WOMEN ARE AMONG THE CEOs OF FORTUNE 500 
COMPANIES.

THE BUSINESS COMMUNITY IS WARY OF THE NEW INITIATIVE.  "WE DON'T FEEL 
THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SHOULD ACT AS A PERSONNEL DIRECTOR," SAYS CECILIA 
SEPP, RESEARCH ANALYST FOR THE U.S. CHAMBER OF COMMERCE.

"WHEN YOU GET TO UPPER-LEVEL JOBS...THERE'S NO QUICK FIX," SAYS LARRY 
KESSLER, AN ATTORNEY WITH THE EQUAL EMPLOYMENT ADVISORY COUNCIL, 
REPRESENTING 200 TOP CORPORATIONS.  "THERE ARE INSTANCES WHERE THERE IS 
DISCRIMINATION, JUST AS THERE ARE INSTANCES WHERE THERE ARE LEGITIMATE 
EXPLANATIONS FOR WHAT HAS GONE ON."  KESSLER SAYS FEDERAL INTERFERENCE 
COULD ENDANGER COMPANY SECRETS - SUCH AS SUCCESSION PLANS AND SALARIES.

Ralph



To Distribution List:
 [deleted]

                      Study: Paid Work Fights Depression
                       -- Especially for Married Women

	In the 1970's, when women began entering the work force in droves, many
experts warned that the increased stress in their lives would boost women's
already high incidence of depression.  One leading sociologist even predicted
that in a few years, women's suicide rates would jump as high as men's.

	That hasn't happened.  In fact, the latest research indicates that the
opposite is true: paid employment seems to be a powerful antidote against
depression in women, especially married women.

	While a number of studies have found this effect, the most persuasive 
evidence comes from a study of depression in 700 disables and married men and 
women.

	The two Canadian authors of this study say their population of
physically disabled people actually yields a more unbiased sample with regard
to the employment than the general population would.  That's because it 
includes a substantial number of people whose unemployment is socially
sanctioned (due to their disabilities) and personally chosen -- unlike many
women in the general population who can't find a job or have to stay home to
take care of children.  As a result, the stress of unemployment is minimized in
the disabled group ad the significance of work in alleviating stress can be
more accurately estimated.

	It is less clear why work has this effect.

	"Some people have hypothesized that women are taken more seriously at
work and not devalued as much as they are at home," Turner says.  "These are
good hypotheses, but we don't really know why work has such a positive effect 
on women." 

	Paid employment. of course also is a powerful buffer against depression
in men:  Turner found that unemployed men in his study showed higher levels of
depression than any of the women, working or not.  But perhaps because men's
self-esteem is so tied up in how well they perform on the job, work and
work-related problems are more likely to be a cause of depression in men that 
in women.  

	Work problems and related financial difficulties are a central theme 
not only in many male suicides, also in suicide-homicide cases.  Many men also
use work to avoid dealing with personal problems.  

	"You'll see men working longer hours when they're having problems,"
says Dr. Ronald Ebert, senior forensic psychiatrist at McLean Hospital.  "Work
and sports are used to avoid feeling; the idea is that you keep busy,you don't
have to feel.
 

    An exhibit of pictures of women's involvement in sports throughout
    history assembled by Sally Fox, will be at the George Sherman Student
    Union at Boston University from Monday August 27th to September 28th.
    
    

    
    re .19 -
    
    There's an article about Fox's work in today's Boston Globe.
    
    D.

    
    Touches on several issues that have come up here, & some that haven't - 
    sexism in advertising, the Central Park jogger case, drunken airline
    pilots, Bush & "prudent recreating" on his gas-guzzling boat...
    
    D.

[Many forwardings deleted]


From:	NAME: RALPH GILLESPIE @MLO          
	FUNC: CORP MATERIALS                  
	TEL: 223-5900           	<GILLESPIE.RALPH AT A1 AT MEMIT1 AT MLO>
Date:	02-Aug-1990			Posted-date: 06-Aug-1990

Subject: LABOR DEPT OUT TO CRACK "GLASS CEILINGS" 


This article was in the USA Today Money paper July 31, 1990 issue.  It's 
quite an interesting article. 


by Julia Lawlor, USA TODAY

The Labor Department is taking aim at the business world's "Glass Ceiling" 
by sending its own investigators into corporate executive suites.

Labor Secretary Elizabeth Dole says a federal "Glass Ceiling Initiative" 
will attack the subtle discrimination that bars women and minorities 
from the top levels of management.  Since a pilot program began in the 
Spring eight corporations have been targeted.  Dole declined to identify 
them.

The formal program, due to start this fall, threatens to cut off access 
to federal contracts for any company found to be discriminating at the 
senior management level.  Dole can also try to force firms to give back 
pay for victims of bias.  The program governs more than 27 million 
workers at 100,000 firms with $200 billion in federal contracts, 
including most of the Fortune 1000.  No quotas will be set.

Dole called the issue "A top priority" and said the department would 
examine companies' training and development programs, rotational 
assignments and reward structures - "All the indicators of upward 
mobility in Corporate America."  Equal opportunity clauses in federal 
contracts permit the government to audit employment practices.

"There can be little doubt that a woman or minority, no matter how 
well-schooled, what their wage or how thick their portfolio, enters many 
business organizations with limited or no hope of reaching the top", 
Dole wrote in response to written questions.

To date, senior management positions have been practically the sole 
province of white males - labor officials say women and minorities 
represent about 30% of middle managers but less than 1% of senior 
executives.  Only three women are among the CEOs of Fortune 500 
companies.

The business community is wary of the new initiative.  "We don't feel 
the Federal Government should act as a personnel director," says Cecilia 
Sepp, research analyst for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

"When you get to upper-level jobs...there's no quick fix," says Larry 
Kessler, an attorney with the Equal Employment Advisory Council, 
representing 200 top corporations.  "There are instances where there is 
discrimination, just as there are instances where there are legitimate 
explanations for what has gone on."  Kessler says federal interference 
could endanger company secrets - such as succession plans and salaries.

    For those of you who can pick up WFCR on your radios (Western Mass)
    there will be an interview with Holly Near broadcast as part of
    their afternoon program "Fresh Air" starting at 4pm today.
    
    Bonnie

  If the edition of "Fresh Air" that they're playing is from the
  live NPR feed, then you can also hear this on:

    o WBUR (FM90.9, Boston MA)

    o WEVO (FM89.1, Concord NH plus translators in
        Nashua (90.3) and Keene (???))

    o Doubtless, other NPR outlets around the nation.

                                   Atlant

    Fresh Air also available on 90.5 (WICN, Worcester?) at 7:00 pm.
    
    Nancy

    From yesterday's Calvin and Hobbs cartoon by Bill Watterson

    Calvin speaks;

    1st panel - Ooooh, that rotten Susie! I hate her! I hate her! She'd
	        better set Hobbs free!

    2nd panel - So I kidnapped her stupid doll! She didn't need to
	        RETALIATE! Can't she take a JOKE?!

    3rd panel - Girls have NO sense of humor! That's their whole problem!

    4th panel - All this was funny until she did the same thing to me.

    Did you see today's Calvin and Hobbs?
    
    Priceless!!
    
    REK

    This week's Newsweek has a very good article on women in the military.
    
    

    With so many politicians these days favoring the death penalty, I ran
    across a wonderful piece of news today from Amnesty International.  AI
    had submitted information to the Colorado Democratic Party, which the
    platform committee did use to help formulate a final statement that
    calls for the abolition of capital punishment.  The statement reads:

        We advocate the elimination of the death penalty.  We support
        repeal of the 1985 sentencing law (CRS 18-1-105) and establishment
        of a fair, responsible and logical sentencing system.

    -- Mike

Extracted from NYTimes, Tuesday, Sep 18, 1990,  page 1.

New Home Front Develops
  As Women Hear Call to Arms

       by Jane Gross

                              .
                              .
                              .

       If the number of women going to the gulf is a measure
       of equality and changing sex roles, the families left
       to cope without them show that the sexes are still
       far from equal.  In long interviews with half a dozen
       families that were split when the wives were called
       to military duty, most of the men said they were
       unaware until their wives left how inequitably the
       chile-rearing tasks were divided and were dumbfounded
       by how hard it was to work and run a household at the
       same time.  And most of the women said they had told
       their husbands they were forced to go, when they had
       actually volunteered.  Otherwise, they said, their
       husbands would have tried to stop them.
                              .
                              .
                              .


        

    

    From the Calendar section of U.S. News & World Report, 
    September 24, 1990.
    
    On October 1, a Connecticut law goes into effect guaranteeing
    that women can get an abortion there even if the U.S. Supreme
    Court overturns Roe v. Wade.
    

    Easton Police Chief Walter Healy, while defending his department's
    issuance of a gun permit to Irving Fryar, was questioned whether 
    Fryar's motor vehicle violations would played a factor in the
    decision...
    
           "...He has motor vehicle violations. Everybody has those."
    
    He was then questioned about Fryars history of violence involving his
    wife and a former girlfriend.
    
           "Again, don't we all?"
    
    Edd 

    
    This could have been entered under "Rape", "Child Abuse" or "Disturbing
    News"........:-(
    
    Reproduced without permission from the Daily Mail newspaper, UK.
    
    "GIRL OF 11 RAPED IN HOSPITAL
    
    A girl aged 11 was raped as she lay in hospital yesterday.
    
    The intruder slipped past nurses and attacked the sick child after
    waking her.
    The sprawling 700-bed complex was protected by only three private
    security guards.
    An inquiry was underway last night at the St Helier hospital in
    Carshalton, Surrey, and the incident will add to concern about the
    soaring crime rate, now a major national political issue.
    
    The attack is all the more horrifying because a hospital is one of the
    few places where parents can leave a youngster and feel completely
    assured.
    The child, assaulted between 1am and 2am, raised the alarm but is so
    distressed that she ahs hardly been able to speak about the incident
    and has not proided a description of the man. She was being comforted
    last night by her parents and women detectives trained in helping rape
    victims.
    
    The hospital has been plagued by car thieves, violent drunks and
    intruders and the girl was in a building locked at midnight. But the
    rapise could have got in before then and lay in wait. He may also have
    got inside when a door was opened for a few minutes in the early hours
    for an emergency case.
    
    Health chiefs pointed out that the hospital, which includes a labyrinth
    of underground tunnels linking parts of the complex, was almost
    impossible to secure fully....
    Newly installed cameras do not cover the area where the attack
    happened. "
    

    A gay  rights  group is boycotting Philip Morris (tobacco company)
    because  Philip  Morris is donating millions of dollars to Senator
    Jesse  Helms  (R- NC), and Jesse Helms has been a major foe of gay
    rights. Philip Morris is suing the gay rights group on the grounds
    that  it's  illegal  to boycott for political rather than economic
    grounds.  [I  don't  know if the suit has been decided, and if so,
    who won.]

From "Marketplace" a radio program on (US) National Public Radio.

    			WARNING
    
    The leading cause of death on the job for women is homicide.  Of
    women fatally hurt at work from 1980 to 1985, 42% were murdered,
    64% by gun.  Among men, accidents are the top occupational killer;
    homicides account for just 12%.
    
    						"Time" Fall 1990
    						Special Issue, page 26.
    
    		*		*		*		*
    
    Homicide is the most frequent cause of death for women in the
    workplace, and 42 percent of these murders are by strangers,
    according to the Centers for Disease Control.  Black women are
    most at risk.
    
    						- Julia Rosenfeld
    						"Ms." January, 1991
    						page 91

    Margaret Thatcher has resigned office.
    
    Ad

    
    Get it right Ad :-)
    
    Mrs T has withdrawn her nomination from the leadership election of the
    ruling Conservatie Party. When, next week, a new leader is selected,
    they will become Prime Minister. Only then will a resignation happen.
    
    /. Ian .\
    
    (Apologies for offering comment, but surely accuracy is important?)

         From: Sports pulse - The Boston Globe Friday, November 30, 1990

         All this time you thought fishing was an equal opportunity  sport,
      but  now  -  through  a  controversial  book written by Peter Behan a
      professor of clinical neurology at Glasgow University - word is  that
      women might very well be better anglers than men.

         According  to  Behan,  fish,  in  particular  salmon,  respond  to
      chemical  messengers  known as pheromones.  Believed to be the agents
      that guide migrating  salmon  back  to  the  river  of  their  birth,
      pheromones also can hook on to humans and tell males from females.

         This means that salmon prefer females.

         In his book, "Salmon and Woman:  the Feminine Angle", Behan  says,
      "It  seems  quite possible that [salmon] could sense the sex hormones
      of womwn and be attracted to them." His theory is  that  an  unknown,
      hormonal chemical in women is transmitted into the water via the rod,
      line and hook and attracts the fish.

         The British record book seems  to  support  Behan's  belief.   The
      biggest  salmon  caught in a British river was a 64-pounder landed by
      Georgiana Ballantine in 1922.   The  biggest  shark  caught  off  the
      British  coast  was  a 500-pound mako hooked by Joyce Yallop 19 years
      ago.

      Compiled by Jim Greenidge
    

    I won't be in on saturday (or anywhere in the rest of this week) so for
    an early "it happened on this day in another constititional monarchy":
    
    On Dec. 8th it's 100 years ago that Emma took the oath as Regent of the
    Netherlands for her 10-year old daughter Wilhelmina. In 1878 the then
    King Willem III decides to merry Prinses Emma to make sure the heritage
    of the Throne is secured. In 1880 Wilhelmina is born.
    
    After his death in 1890, since Wilhelmina is only 10 years old, Emma
    becomes regent. She establishes the monarchy as we know it today.
    Succeeded by Wilhelmina, Juliana and the present Queen Beatrix she
    started a century of female monarchs.
    
    BTW, this will take an end soon as Prins Willem Alexander will replace
    his mother. But Queen's Day will never die in Holland...
    
    Ad

    From "Time" for December 10, 1990, page 67.
    
    "The half-canton of Appenzell Inner-Rhoden has long and proudly
    refused women the right to vote in local elections.  ... The Swiss
    Supreme Court in Lausanne declared that Appenzell's 4,500 women over
    age 20 did have the right to vote. ...  In the town's central square,
    some men grumbled about the *Diktat* from Laussane but otherwise
    took the ruling in stride.  The women seemed pleased if a bit
    restrained; when night fell, however, a few quietly decorated the
    fountain in the all but deserted square with flowers."

    p 5, June 1990 issue of R&D Magazine (yes I'm a bit behind):
    
    An east coast Einstein expert says he can prove that the father of
    atomic power was actually a woman.
    
    Evan Walker, a physicist at the US Army Ballistic Research Laboratory,
    Aberdeen, Md, has found what he calls "damning evidence" that
    Einstein's scientist-wife, Mileva Maric, played a key role in the
    development of the theory of relativity.
    
    In letters written to his wife, Einstein repeatedly refers fo the
    theory as "our work," Walker says.  Walker also located family
    testimonies of Maric's contributions and original relativity papers
    bearing Maric's signature.
    
    "We felt the story was incomplete, and suddenly it's clear how all of
    these things happened," Walker says.

From Clarinet:


	WASHINGTON (UPI) -- A federal judge ordered the Food and Drug
Administration to release safety data on silicone breast implants to
consumer activists who claim such implants imperil women's health.
	Public Citizen Health Research Group, founded by Ralph Nader, filed
suit against the FDA in February 1989 after the agency refused to
release 30 years worth of research on the safety of implanted materials
like silicone gel. The research had been submitted to the FDA by Dow
Corning Corp., of Midland, Mich., the major maker of silicone gel used
in breast implants.
	Dow Corning performed and paid for a number of studies on the safety
of silicone implants in the 1960s and early 1970s but never released the
results.
	Since the 1960s, more than 2 million American women have received
breast implants -- about 85 percent to enlarge their bustline and about
15 percent to reconstruct a breast after mastectomy. About another 130,
000 women women get implants annually.
	Silicone gel has been shown to cause a deadly soft-tissue cancer in
laboratory animals, Public Citizen said, and has been associated with
the development of chronic arthritis and immune diseases like
scleroderma in humans. Women may also suffer complications shortly after
surgery like inflammation and scarring of the breast and surrounding
tissues and swollen lymph glands, the consumer group said.
	The FDA argued that results of 750 ``biosafety'' studies and 39
toxicology studies it received from Dow Corning was ``confidential
commercial information'' so the documents could not be provided to
Public Citizen. The group's additional request for a summary of consumer
complaints about Dow Corning's breast implants was opposed by the
Michigan firm, which had furnished the FDA the list.
	In his ruling Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Stanley Sporkin said he
found ``neither the animal studies nor the complaint summary were exempt
from (public) disclosure'' under the Freedom of Information Act.
	Under the judge's order, Public Citizen will receive more than 5,000
pages of research data and a list of consumer complaints dating from
1984 through 1988.
	``We plan to share this information with the 2 million women'' who
have received the implants, said Dr. Sidney Wolfe, head of Public
Citizen. ``A large number, tens of thousands of women, suffer
complications from being implanted.''
	FDA officials said Tuesday they had not had a chance to review the
suit, and Dow Corning officials could not be reached for comment.
	Public Citizen has called on the FDA to pull silicone gel breast
implants off the market, saying manufacturers never submitted data to
prove the devices were safe. The FDA is expected to finalize regulations
next month that will ask companies to produce data showing such implants
are safe, Wolfe said.
	``It is tragic that we must sue our government to obtain information
about the safety of a device that has been implanted in more than 2
million women. This is information that the FDA should have required ...
as part of pre-market approval process some 25 years ago,'' Public
Citizen has said.

From Clarinet:


	WASHINGTON (UPI) -- The Food and Drug Administration Monday approved
the first over-the-counter drug for vaginal yeast infections, which
strike nearly three-quarters of women during their lifetimes.
	The drug, clotrimazole, has been available by prescription for yeast
infections for more than a decade.
	``Clotrimazole is highly effective and carries a minimal risk. FDA
has concluded that the switch of this drug to non-prescription sale will
benefit women -- especially those who are subject to recurring
infections,'' said Dr. Carl Peck, director of FDA's Center for Drug
Evaluation and Research.
	The drug, to be sold under the trade name Gyne-Lotrimin by Schering-
Plough in Kenilworth, N.J., will be available as a vaginal suppository
or as a cream with a special applicator. The cost of a seven-day course
of treatment will be about $15 to $25, a company spokeswoman said.
	The labeling will advise women that if the signs of infection do not
clear up after three days of treatment they should contact their
doctors. In addition, it tells women who have never previously suffered
from the condition to consult with a physician.
	About 22 million cases of vaginal yeast infection, or candidiasis,
are reported in the United States annually.
	The infection, caused by a fungus called Candida, produces itching
and burning, sometimes with a discharge and soreness. The problem often
develops when factors like illness, contraceptives or antibiotics upset
the body's natural balance of bacteria and allow the yeast to take over.
	``Until now, many women avoided a trip to the doctor and have
attempted to treat themselves with home remedies such as vinegar and
salt water douches or feminine hygiene sprays, which only mask the
symptoms,'' Dr. Raquel Arias, an assistant professor of gynecology at
University of Southern California-Los Angeles, said in a statement
released by Schering-Plough.

Jakarta (Jakarta Post):

West Java has recorded its first known case of immaculate conception.

Suwarti bin Hidayat, 20, a resident of Jati Mulya villiage in West
Java, recently gave birth even though she and her parents insist she has
never been with any man, the weekly Terbil Minggu recently reported.

An Islamic religious leader who met with Suwarti and her parents
believed their story and said the father was "some kind of spirit."

Other Islamic leaders said that sexual congress between people and spirits
"is indeed possible as spirits are also God's creatures with the same
sexual urges as humans."  They added that it was impossible to know what
form the spirits took, but that a woman who really loved one could tell.

    Heard on the news this morning...
    
    The search is escalating in Salt Lake for a serial child rapist whose
    most recent victim was a 12 year old newpaper carrier.  The child was beaten
    and raped last week.
                
    :(Barb

    From the  news  today  (perhaps someone can enter a complete text,
    this is from memory from a radio report):

    The FDA  has  approved  an implantable contraceptive for women. It
    takes a few minutes to implant the device in the upper arm, and it
    provides  contraception  for  5  years.  It  can  be removed in 20
    minutes,  and  fertility  returns  within  two months. The cost is
    guessed to be about $200, which it was pointed out is cheaper than
    the pill on a per month basis.

--David

    RE: -1
    
    There was an article in the Worcester paper about these implants,
    and a doctor at Memorial Hospital who'll begin doing them in the
    spring. Four small tubes are implanted that secrete a hormone
    (don't recall which one).  With the consultation and the implant
    the cost for this particular doctor will be $400.  
    IMO, it's worth it!
    
    Linda
    

maybe this belongs in humor, but...
    
From:	VICKI::FORTY2::CASEE::VNS "The VOGON News Service  12-Dec-1990 1111" 12-DEC-1990 07:47:54.93
To:	VNS-Distribution
CC:	
Subj:	VNS #2215  Wed 12-Dec-1990

<><><><><><><><>  T h e   V O G O N   N e w s   S e r v i c e  <><><><><><><><>

 Edition : 2215            Wednesday 12-Dec-1990            Circulation :  8498 
VNS MAIN NEWS:                                    [Kate Noyce, VNS UK News Desk]
==============                                    [Reading, England            ]

    A Shoreditch man who held up a petrol station with a cucumber was
    gaoled for three years yesterday.  Carl Lancaster approached the
    cashier with the cucumber inside a plastic bag.  Lancaster, who had
    earlier bought the cucumber and a bunch of bananas at a greengrocer's
    was caught when his getaway taxi was blocked by customers.

The San Fransisco Olympic Club, one of the most famous "Men Only" clubs in the
City has agreed to a "Consent Decision" to settle a lawsuit brought by the
City Attorney (Louise Renne) they have agreed to admit women.

The suit was brought on the grounds that the club recieved city and state
benefits, and was not purely a private social club. The benefits include
having their building on land owned by the city, and some of the evidence that
it was not purely a private social club were that some members deducted club
dues as business expenses on their income tax. (This latter practice stopped,
perhaps in response to the suit.)

Reactions at the club were "mixed" (to say the least).


[Heard on the radio.]

	-- Charles

Article          237
From: clarinews@clarinet.com (B.J. DEL CONTE)
Newsgroups: clari.news.gov.international,clari.news.sex,clari.news.interest.people
Subject: 'Sexercise' can replace passion, researcher says
Date: 29 Dec 90 23:07:22 GMT
 
 
	TORONTO (UPI) -- Sexercise, or using lovemaking as a sport, can put
the spark back in a relationship, a Canadian researcher says.
	But University of British Columbia psychologist Susan Butt warns
excessive ``sport sex'' is as bad as overdoing it at the gym.
	Butt, a Vancouver-based scientist, said that by adopting her view on
sexercise, couples can dissipate the guilt or sorrow they feel when
long-term relationships cool after three to five years.
	``Relating sex to fitness and fun can unburden people immensely,''
Butt said Friday. ``It can help them get over the emotional ladenness
and high, unreasonable expectations they may have.''
	Moreover, couples who view sex as exercise are less prone to take a
dim view of a mate who begs off because he or she is tired.
	``If your partner said they were too tired to go skiing you wouldn't
be insulted,'' said Butt, Canada's top ranked female tennis player in
the 1960s.
	``Sex may be the most basic, intense and frequent form of physical
exercise,'' she said. ``It is a biological response which has much in
common with sport.''
	Sex and sporting activities are similar because they involve muscle
tension, breathing control, rhythm and timing, Butt said.
	``In particular, the muscle rigidity that occurs during orgasm is
also necessary for outstanding athletic feats,'' Butt said.
	``Jumping, gymnastics, tennis, football -- almost all sports -- require
muscle tone, focus, strength and sometimes strain, as does sex. They
also require skill and technique.''

But what happens if she's a sprinter and he's a marathon runner?
(or, to make matters worse, a rugby player?)

Martin.

     Dateline: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, Saturday, 2 February, 1991


	As you'll see by my personal_name, I am located at Digital's downtown 
Melbourne Office in Australia. Yesterday, our fair city was graced with the 
arrival of one Michael Dukakis. "The Duke", as he's affectionately known back 
in Boston, Massachusetts, is here in Australia for about five weeks, most of 
which will be in Melbourne, this to mark the 12th anniversary of the 
Melbourne-Boston sister city friendship.

	"The Duke" will deliver the inaugural Boston Lecture ("Federalism in 
the '90s") at Wilson Hall, University of Melbourne, on 5 March, 1991 for the 
Melbourne-Boston Committee, and take up a visiting fellowship at the 
University.

	He and his wife, Kitty, seemed fully recovered from the trauma at his 
losing the presidential election race and the subsequent collapse of his 
Massachusetts Democratic administration. At the time, "The Duke" was said to 
be depressed and Mrs. Dukakis acknowledged a long battle with alcoholism.

	While in Australia he said that he wants to study the national health 
service here, because the USA seemed to be the only advanced nation that could 
not provide basic health cover for its citizens.

	He defended the policies of his Massachusetts administraion, which 
were incidentally, influential in the shaping of the policies of the Victorian 
State Government here in Melbourne. Now, just as "The Duke" is no longer 
Governor, and his state, like that of Victoria, is cash-strapped. He said that 
he would not be offering the current Victorian State Government any financial 
advice to help get it out of its current mess. 

	As news develops Down Under with respect to "The Duke's" visit, I'll 
try to keep you up-to-date with the latest here. Also, if the aforementioned 
address at Melbourne University is broadcast on radio and/or TV here, I'll try 
and do a transcript of it for you.. ie., providing he's reasonably brief.

Don
*8-)

	SAN FRANCISCO (UPI) -- A ``reasonable woman'' should decide what
constitutes sexual harassment because so-called sex-blind legal
standards are biased toward males, a federal appeals court ruled
Wednesday.
	The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said commonly held standards of
what is appropriate conduct between men and women often fail to take
into account the fact women are almost always the victims of sexual
assault and perceive comments and actions differently than men.
	``We adopt the perspective of a 'reasonable woman' primarily because
we believe that a sex-blind reasonable-person standard tends to be male-
biased and tends to systematically ignore the experiences of women,''
wrote Justice Robert R. Beezer.
	The decision came in the case of a San Mateo, Calif. IRS agent who
said the reinstatement of a male co-worker who had written her sexually
explicit love notes created an unfair, hostile environment in her
office.
	A district court judge dismissed her claim without allowing the case
to go to trial and the agent appealed.
	Wednesday's decision ordered the district court to more fully
investigate whether the agent's claim of a hostile environment was
accurate. But it also set a new standard for such cases in the nine-
state circuit and one that could be cited in all federal courts.
	Beezer wrote that a ``reasonable person'' might consider some
behavior acceptable that a reasonable woman would find offensive. That
behavior could easily poison the workplace and make it impossible for
the woman employee to stay on the job.
	``If we only examined whether a reasonable person would engage in
allegedly harassing conduct, we would run the risk of reinforcing the
prevailing level of discrimination,'' Beezer wrote. ``Harassers could
continue to harass merely because a particular discriminatory practice
was common, and victims of harassment would have no remedy.''
	He noted that women are disproportionately victims of rape and other
sexual assaults and, therefore, ``have a stronger incentive to be
concerned with sexual behavior.''
	On the other hand, ``men, who are rarely victims of sexual assault,
may view sexual conduct in a vacuum without a full appreciation of the
social setting or the underlying threat of violence that a woman may
perceive.''
	Beezer wrote that the ruling does not give women a higher level of
protection than men, nor does it open the door to frivilous claims.
	The word ``reasonable'' should help courts screen out complaints from
the ``rare hyper-sensitive employee,'' he said.
	``By acknowledging and not trivializing the effects of sexual
harassment on reasonable women, courts can work towards ensuring that
neither men nor women will have to run a gauntlet of sexual abuse in
return for the privilege of being allowed to work and make a living,''
Beezer wrote.
	Beezer was joined in the opinion by Alex Kozinski. Albert Lee
Stephens, however, dissented, said the neutral language in laws covering
sexual harassment was necessary.
	``I believe that it is incumbent upon the court in this case to use
terminlogy that will meet the neds of all who seek recourse,'' he wrote.
	However, he agreed the case should go to trial.






Xref: pa.dec.com clari.news.law.civil:733 clari.news.law.supreme:549 clari.news.group.women:624
Path: pa.dec.com!decwrl!uunet!looking!clarinews
From: clarinews@clarinet.com (BILL BUCY)
Newsgroups: clari.news.law.civil,clari.news.law.supreme,clari.news.group.women
Subject: Court says women must define sexual harassment
Keywords: civil proceedings, legal, supreme court, women, special interest
Message-ID: <Uharass_20c@clarinet.com>
Date: 23 Jan 91 20:13:40 GMT
Lines: 54
Approved: clarinews@clarinet.com
ACategory: usa
Slugword: harass
Priority: regular
Format: regular
ANPA: Wc: 554; Id: a1235; Sel: na--a; Adate: 1-23-250pes; Ver: refiling
Codes: ynlbrxx., ynlhrxx., ynjwrxx., xxxxxxxx
Note: (refiling with national anpa coding)

================================================================================
Note 10.1212                       News Briefs                      1212 of 1216
VCSESU::MOSHER::COOK "Caught in a mosh!"             16 lines  11-MAR-1991 14:55
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    
	NASA is inviting us the public to propose names of notable women 
    	for many of the impact craters and large volcanic vents being 
    	discovered on Venus by the Magellan spacecraft's imaging radar. 
 
	Send 'em to the Magellan Project office at NASA's Jet Propulsion 
    	Laboratory.
 
		Venus Names
		Magellan Project Office
		Mail Stop 230-201
		Jet Propulsion Laboratory
		4800 Oak Grove Dr.
		Pasadena, Calif. 91109
    
	See the SPACE:: conference for details.

	re "See the SPACE:: conference for details."
        
        Specifically, that's VIKA::SPACE note 456.287 (181 lines).
        
        An excerpt follows.  If you are serious about suggesting
        names, extract and read the rest of it.
        
        Dan
        
>>	There are certain stipulations, however.  For example, women
>>must have been deceased for at least 3 years and must have been in
>>some way notable or worthy of the honor. 
>> 
>>	Names of military or political figures of the 19th and 20th
>>Centuries are specifically forbidden under rules of the IAU, as are
>>the names of persons prominent in any of the six main living religions. 
>>Names of a specific national significance also are not allowed. 

    Don't have all the details, but I heard on the radio (WBCN) that a man
    in New York has contracted the HIV virus. He used to go into New Jersy
    with others and beat up Gays. He would often have cuts on his hands and
    they would be covered in his victims blood. Don't know how true and
    know we aren't supposed to comment in this string but......
    
    Phil

<<< Note 37.61 by SCARGO::CONNELL "Afterlife! I don't think there's a shelflife." >>>

  The story also appeared in the (Boston) Globe over the weekend.  I
  can't say whether it was Saturday or Sunday.

                                   Atlant

    Here's the clip I saw....

 
 
(reprinted without permission, Boston Globe, 3/21/91, page 6)
 
 
LONDON - A heterosexual man who beat homosexuals became infected with
HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, from the blood of his victims, The
Lancet, a British medical journal, reported yesterday.  The case
initially baffled doctors, as the man had not been exposed to any of
the usual causes of the virus.  The man revealed  later that he used
to go out with friends in New York and New Jersey and beat gay men.
The man, who was not named, often had "large amounts" of his victim's
blood on his skin and sustained small cuts on his hands.  "The case
should serve as a useful deterent to this disturbing practice [sic.],"
The Lancet said.  (Reuters)
 
**********************************************************************

    re: .63
    
         Yes, and additional information indicated that this was the 
    only likely source for the disease for the man because he had
    had no surgeries, etc., and because he had been impotent (with
    his wife) for ten years.  [And you wonder what people do with
    all their pent up angers, frustrations, etc., huh?!]
    
    
    Frederick
    

    Uhm...just because he had been impotent with his wife doesn't mean
    he hadn't been...er...functional...elsewhere, yes?
    
    --DE
    

There is an interesting article in today's(4/2) Wall Street Journal, 1st Page,
about the 'macho' women of Juchinta, Mexico.
I particularly liked the way a cab driver was awakened.

    British Columbia became the first province in Canada to have a woman
    premier today. Rita Johnston became the interim premier after Bill
    Vander Zalm resigned over a conflict of interest. She is also one of
    the front runners in the upcoming Social Credit party leadership
    contest.
    
    ...laura

    
    Social Credit Party? 
    
    Is that a lefty outfit?

    ...actually, the social credit party is generally right of center,
    ranging from wacko-right (the outgoing premier) to pragmatic centrist
    (the new premier).
    
    ...laura

    I found this in the Rocky Mountain New today.  
    
    Madrid Spain- A doctor jailed for performing an abortion on a 14-year
    old who had been sexually abused wince childhood could soon receive a
    government pardon.  
    
    The doctor has been given a 4 year sentence for violating the very
    strict abortion law in Spain which limits abortion to cases of rape,
    incest, or danger to the mother's life.  
    
    The teen had the abortion performed in 1984 six months before she
    reported to police that she had been raped by her uncle since she was 8
    years old.  
    
    Here's the kicker.  The 50-year old uncle was sentenced to *TWO YEARS*
    for statutory rape. 

From (the new) _Ms._, Vol 1, No. 2,  quoted in _Women's
Review of Books_, Vol.7, No.7, 4/91.  
Excerpt from conversation with Chai Ling, one of the Chinese dissident
student leaders:

"C.L.: You know, the world knows about the young man who stood in front
of the tanks because there was a famous picture, but even before that,
a young girl, not taller than me, stood alone in front of the tanks,
holding out her hand to stop them.  The tanks did not stop.  The girl
was crushed.  No journalist, no photographer recorded her act.
I don't even know her name.  Nobody knows that girl, but she died."
    

              <<< HANZI::$4$DUA0:[NOTES$LIBRARY]CHINA_89.NOTE;1 >>>
                      -< China and Hongkong news of 1989 >-
================================================================================
Note 368.279                Students' strike in China                 279 of 347
COVERT::COVERT "John R. Covert"                     196 lines  16-JUN-1989 05:13
                            -< Moved by moderator >-
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WOODRO::HU "Network Zone, towed away"               193 lines  16-JUN-1989 00:47
                     -< What happening on TAM on Jun/3 ?? >-
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Translation of the full transcript of a tape made by Cai Ling,
leader of the student movement on June 8 as published in a Hong
Kong paper: Oversea's Chinese Economic Journal.  Cai Ling was
sobbing as she was doing the recording.

------

June 8, 1989, 4 pm.  I am Cai Ling, Supreme Commander of Defence
of Tiananmen, I'm still alive.
    On the evening of June 3, between 8, 9 and 10, the situation
got worse and worse.  News of people being beaten to death kept
coming in, more than ten times.  Our Command issued a statement,
our only slogan: Down with Li Peng government.
    At 9 pm sharp, all the students at Tiananmen stood up, raised
our right hands and swore, " I pledge that for the cause of
developing democracy in our motherland, for the prosperity of our
country, to prevent a small group of conspirators from
undermining out great motherland, to prevent our one billion
population from white terror, I pledge our young lives to the
defence of Tiananmen, to defend the republic.  Our heads may be
cut off, our blood may be shed but we will not allow the loss of
people's square.  We will defend to the last with our lives."
    After 10 pm, our command told everybody that since April,
when the movement was mainly that of a patriotic student
movement, and into May when the movement turned into a people's
movement, our principle has always been peaceful demonstration.
The highest principle of our struggle is peace.  A lot of fellow
students, workers, citizens of Beijing came to our command post
and said this was not the way to conduct the struggle, you should
take up arms and some of us were quite agitated.  Our command
said to them, we are here for peaceful demonstration, the highest
principle of peace is to sacrifice ourselves.  That's how we
were, we linked hands, shoulder to shoulder, we came out of our
tents, we were singing the Internationale and we set on the steps
of the monument, peacefully.  With our peaceful eyes, we awaited
the arrival of butchers, we knew we were conducting a war between
love and hate, not a war between arms and violence.  We all knew
that this democratic peaceful movement has peace as our highest
principle and we didn't want it to end with fellow students using
sticks and bottles to fight those armed with bayonets, tanks, the
soldiers who had lost their senses, that would be the greatest
tragedy of our movement.
    We were just sitting there quietly, waiting to sacrifice
ourselves.  Then our loudspeakers played "Descendants of Dragon",
fellow students were singing along with tears in their eyes, we
were holding on to each other, we held hands.  Each of us knew
the end was here, the time to sacrifice our lives for our people
was here.
    There was a young student, he was 15 and he wrote his last
testimony.  I can't remember his exact words, I only remembered
one thing he said to me.  He said, "Life is strange, there is
only a fine line between life and death, sometimes I see a worm
crawling along, when it moves a little, it will get trampled on
and will never move again."  He was only 15 and he thought about
death.  Republic, please remember, this child fought for you.
    Between 2 and 3 am, we had to abandon the public address
system at the bottom of the steps and moved up to the one on the
monument itself.  Those of us in command went around the monument
to comfort our fellow students and to mobilize them.  We were
just sitting there.  Some said, the first row was most
determined,  fellow students in the back row said they are just
as determined, if the first row got attacked we would not run
away.  I told them a very old story.  "There was an ant hill with
one billion ants.   One day the hill was on fire, the ants
realised that they must get through the fire if they were to be
saved.  So some of the ants held together and rolled towards the
fire, those on the outer edge were burned to death but the rest
of the ants lived.  Fellow students, we are on the square, we are
standing on the outer edge of our people."  Each of us understood
that only through our sacrifice could we save the republic.  We
sang the Internationale.
    Later, several compatriots, He Dejian and others on hunger
strike said they couldn't bear it.  They said, "Kids, don't
sacrifice yourselves here?"  But we students were very
determined.  Some went to seek out the army to negotiate, to find
someone who was responsible for "cleaning up the square" and
offer to leave the square peacefully if our safety were
guaranteed.
    At this time, our command were soliciting the opinion of
students whether to stay or to leave.  It was decided that we
should leave.  But while we were preparing to retreat, those
butchers did not keep their words.  The soldiers in helmets and
with bayonets came charging up the monument, before we could
announce our decision to retreat.  They destroyed our speaker
system and defaced the monument.  It's people's monument, how
could they shoot at the monument.
    The rest of the students were retreating, we were crying,
fighting.  Some citizens told us not to cry, we said we'll be
back, because this is the people's square.  But we learned later
that some students still believe the government and soldiers
would not hurt them, they thought the worst case would be to be
forcibly taken away.  They were too tired and were sleeping in
tents, the tanks made meat pies out of them.
    Some said two hundred or so students had died.  Some said
over four thousand died in the square.  The actual figure I still
don't know, but those on the outer edge, those belonging to the
autonomous workers union were all dead, they had at least twenty
to thirty people.  I heard when students were retreating,
soldiers in tanks and APC's put abandoned tents, clothes and
students' bodies together, poured gasoline over them and set them
on fired.  Then they washed the grounds and not a trace of
evidence was left.  The symbol of our democratic movement - the
goddess of liberty was ran over by a tank and broke up into small
pieces.  We linked hands, went round Chairmen Mao's Memorial Hall
towards the west and saw about 30,000 armed soldiers, many
students cried "Dogs, fascists".
    The soldiers were heading towards Tiananmen.  We passed
Liubuko, member of our command were in the first row.  On the
afternoon of June 3, Liubuko was the site of one of the first
bloody battles, debris, trash cans, burned out were everywhere.
We went from Liubuko to Chang An Blvd.  We saw burned out
vehicles and broken cobble stones, obviously a fierce and bloody
battle was fought there but there was not one body around.  We
learned later that the fascists were mowing people down with
machine guns, the soldiers coming from the back would pick up the
bodies and put them on buses or trolleys.  Some of them might
still be alive when picked up and must had suffocated to death
among all the bodies.  These fascist covered their crimes well.
    We were marching back to the Square.  The citizens of Beijing
tried to turn us away.  "Kids, do you know they have machine guns
set up?  Don't sacrifice yourselves!"  We then left through Xidan
to retreat to our campus.  On the way, we saw a mother crying out
loud, her kid was dead.  I could see from the body that it was
killed by soldiers and laying on the street.  I continually
received reports that people got shot.  These citizens didn't
commit any crime, they didn't even shout slogans.
    A friend of mine told me, he was trying to stop tanks in
Chang An Blvd around 2 am.  He saw with his own eyes, a girl not
very tall, with her left hand on her hip and her right hand
waving and stood in front of a tank.  She was ran over and became
a meat pie.  He was holding a fellow student each with his left
and right hands.  His friend on his right was shot and fell, then
his friend on his left was also shot and fell. He was lucky to be
alive.  On the way back, we saw mothers looking for their kids,
wives looking for their husbands and teachers looking for their
students.
    The machines guns all round had banners on them, "Support the
correct decision of the Party Central Committee".  Students were
greatly angered by this banners and tore them down.  The radio were
saying the army was in Beijing to take care of the rioters, to
maintain the order of the capital.  I think I'm most qualified to
say that students were not rioters.  Every Chinese with
conscious, put your hand on your heart, think about it, the kids
were holding hands, sitting by the monument and waited for the
arrival of butchers.  Are these rioters?  If they are rioters,
would they be sitting there quietly?
    How far has fascism gone?  Shamelessly, against their own
conscious and they telling the biggest lies.  If the soldiers
who mowed down innocent people are animals then what are those
lying in front of cameras?
    As we were leaving the Square and on Chang An Blvd, a tank
was charging our way.  It fired tear gas.  It ran over students,
over their legs, their heads.  Many were could not die in one
piece, who are the rioters?
    It was like this, our fellow students leading in front, we
maintained our pace, it was like this.
    Fellow students were wearing masks, the tear gas made our
throats really soar and painful.  For those who have already
sacrificed their lives, what would bring them back.  They would
forever echoed on Chang An Blvd.
    Those of us who walked back from Tiananmen, those who were
still alive came back to Beijing University.  There were many
students from other campus and other cities, we had prepared beds
for them.
    We were in deep sorrow.  We were alive.  But there were many
more who stayed at the Square, stayed on Chang An Blvd.  They'll
never come back, never.  Some of them were young, very young,
they'll never be back.  Afterwards, we got information related to
June 3.  At 10 pm, Li Peng gave three orders.  First, the
soldiers could shoot.  Second, the army must move will all haste
and they must win.  By the morning of June 4, they must totally
recover the Square.  Third, the leaders and organizers of the
movement are to be killed at will.
    Compatriots!  The ruthless and insane 'puppet' government are
still moving the army around.  A massacre is going on in Beijing,
perhaps a massacre is also going on in other parts of the
country.  But compatriots, the darker it gets, the sooner will
dawn arrive.  When the fascists are pursuing senseless crack
down, then a real people's and democratic republic is to be
borne.
    A critical life and death situation has arrived for our
country.  Compatriots, every citizen who has conscious, every
Chinese, awake!  The final victory belongs to civilians.  The
'puppet' Central Committee leadership of Yang, Li, Wang and Bo is
not far from destruction.

    Down with Fascism.
    Down with Military Rule.
    People will triumph.
    Long live the republic.
 

The Washington Post reported yesterday that the a national commitee of the 
Presbyterian Church has issued a report on human sexuality that, among other
things "attacks the sexual attitudes of the church and this country as
partriarchial, homophobic, and biased towards heterosexuality." It goes on to
question "the importance Americans place on marriage, affirms masturbation and
petting among teen-agers, and says that maturity, not marriage, should determine
when teens engage in intercourse." It says that the church should "endorse new
family structures, including same-sex couples with adopted children." The report
also says that "gay and lesbian couples should enjoy the same rights as
heterosexual couples."

Committee chairman John J. Carey says, "Middle-class America had a heart attack.
At least we've gotten their attention."

Amen to that!

No wonder people are returning to the church!

	-- Charles

    The following is a reprint of a SJ Mercury News article, 23 Apr 91, 
    p 3F, originally from the New York Times.  w/o permission.
    
    Study: Using Birth Control is safer than not using it
    
    Contrary to popular opinion, using birth control is safer and healthier
    than not using it, according to a report released Monday.
    
    "The average woman who has ever used the Pill is less likely to get
    cancer and die as a result before age 55 than a woman who has never
    used the Pill," the report said.
    
    When the risk of death is set against deaths prevented, using
    contraception saves 120 to 150 lives per 100,000 women, the report
    said.  Contraception also prevents about 1,500 hospitalizations per
    100,000 women per year, it said.
    
    Figures published Monday by the Alan Guttmacher Institute indicate 
    that on balance the protective effects of contraception- including
    prevention of at least two kinds of cancer, endometriosis, pelvic
    inflammatory disease and, of course, the health hazards of pregnancy-
    far outweigh the danger of its side effects.
    
    The only doubtful case is that of breast cancer.  Overall, it appears
    that the Pill prevents breast cancer.  But some studies have shown that
    women in their 30s and early 40s who have used the Pill for many years
    may have an increased incidence of cancer.
    
    At the same time, women in their late 40s and early 50s who have been
    long-term Pill users have fewer breast cancers than those who have
    never used the Pill.
    
    The Guttmacher report, a 129-page statistical picture of contraception
    in America, says that use of spermicides, condoms and diaphragms also
    protect against disease, preventing cervical cancer and pelvic
    inflammatory disease.

    from Reuters, printed in Boston Globe Thursday, May 16, 1991
    
    Washington - The number of state and federal prisoners grew by 58,626,
    or 8.2 percent, to a record 771,243 in 1990, the federal government
    said yesterday.  The Bureau of Justice Statistics said the 1990 growth
    rate was more moderate than the 13.5 jump in 1989 but still added
    significantly to the problem of overcrowded prisons.  Since 1980, the
    nation's prison population has increased by nearly 134 percent from
    329,821 to the record 771,243 counted on Dec. 31, 1990.

    Published in the Boston Globe 16-May-1991

    William Raspberry is a conservative columnist.

    Andrew Rutherford knows it's hard to give full attention to the preachings
    of a pacifist when your camp is under enemy attack.  Yet here he was last
    week, this British criminologist, trying to impress on crime-ridden America
    the futility of imprisonment.

    Worse for his case, he's not at all sure how - or even whether - we can
    make things better; all he knows is that  our resort to massive
    incarceration tends to exacerbate our lawlessness.  At some level of our
    consciousness, we know it, too.  And yet we feel ourselves so beset by
    crime that we can't stop demanding more draconian sentences, particularly
    for violent offenders, even if it means spending money we don't have for
    more and more prison cells.

    Just to keep pace with the present rate of incarceration would require the
    construction of 250 cells a day, at a cost of $12.5 million [per day?].
    We imprison more black males per capita than South Africa.  The average
    cost for incarceration a juvenile is $29,600 a year.  Annual costs for
    room, board, and tuition at Hovered come to just over $18,000.

    And what do we get for our lock-'em up approach to crime?  America's inmate
    population doubled (to more than a million*) during the 1980s, while the
    crime rate remained substantially unchanged.

    Ah, but what might our crime rate have been if we hadn't locked up so many
    criminals?  Isn't it logical to suppose that it might have been a good deal
    higher?

    Rutherford can respond only with the experience of Europe, particularly
    Germany and England, where the prison population has declined with no
    discernible increase in criminality.  The West German peak was in 1983,
    when there were 62,300 inmates.  Today there are about 51,000.

    "The decline is evident right across Germany." he said in an interview,
    "from the liberal city-states in the north to the conservative states like
    Bavaria in the south.  The same thing has happened in Britain, which,
    since its 1988 peak, has seen a drop of 8 percent, much of it among
    juveniles.  In both countries the decline is against a projected increase
    in prison population."

    Moreover, the European decline "happened without the invention of new
    alternatives or new resources," says Rutherford, a veteran of Great
    Britain's prison system, a former chairman of the Howard League for Prison
    Reform, and a member of the law faculty at the University of Southampton.

    What has happened, he says, is that prosecutors and courts in Europe have
    come to see imprisonment less as a solution than as part of the problem. 
    "Interestingly, the declines in Germany and England occurred during
    conservative administrations and without any urging from the central
    governments.  Neither (West German Chancellor Helmut) Kohl nor (former
    British Prime Minister Margaret) Thatcher particularly favored reducing
    prison populations.  If I had to guess the reason for the shift in
    attitude, I'd say it was the generational influence.  People who are now in
    key positions in the prosecutors' departments and courts are of a
    generation that is raising questions about the utility of prisons in
    controlling crime.

    "The have concluded that the criminal justice process can have damaging and
    self-defeating effects, and that every effort should be made to keep people
    away from courts and, particularly, prisons."

    What they are doing instead is what we here call "{diversion": using such
    prosecutorial and judicial discretion as fines, restitution, community
    service and therapy - particularly drug treatment - to keep offenders out
    of prison.  It isn't so much that they believe alternative treatment will
    make criminals better (though preliminary evidence suggests it might) as
    their certainty that incarceration will make them worse.

    Could America benefit from such an approach?  Rutherford urges that we at
    least try it.  He argues that because prison almost routinely makes
    offenders worse, the best way to reduce criminality may be to keep them out
    of the criminal justice system whenever we can.

    The question is not whether we believe him - most of us know he's right -
    but whether our fear of crime will lead us to keep calling for ever stiffer
    sentences, no matter how counterproductive (and costly) they may be.
    
    
    * note conflict with the 771,243 in the preceding article)

 Molly Yard has suffered a stroke and is in serious condition. (Form last
night's news.)

Article 518 of clari.news.sex:

	 AKRON, Ohio (UPI) -- Some 2,500 of what are being billed as the first
condoms for women have been stolen from the manufacturer making them for
a New Jersey firm.
	The condoms haven't hit the retail market yet, but they reportedly
have turned up in Cleveland and Akron bars since their theft from Akron
Rubber Development Inc. last week.
	Twenty-six cases of the female condoms were stolen along with a
coffee maker, four stools and a telephone.
	The condoms are to be test marketed in Tampa, San Francisco and
Houston by International Prophylactics Inc. of Princeton.
	``It looks like they just could not wait for them to come out,'' said
Dr. A.V.K. Reddy, a physician who invented the Bikini Condom.
	Reddy said his company was the first to receive a patent for the
female condom and he believes his company will be the first to sell
them, although other firms are developing condoms for females.
	Reddy said women are 50 percent more likely than men to contract AIDS
from unprotected intercourse because of more extensive exposure, and his
prodct gives women more control on whether a condom is used.
	It's shaped like a bikini with a condom attached.
	Reddy said he didn't believe another company was behind the theft
because he had a ``very strong patent.''
	Akron Rubber Development officials said they have manufactured 40,000
of the condoms at the plant, but there's little hope of the Rubber
Capital of the World becoming the major manufacturing base if the new
product catches on.
	Reddy said full-scale production will likely be done in India,
Malaysia or Thailand.

	*** Clarinet Headers ***


Article 518 of clari.news.sex:
Path: e2big.mko.dec.com!pa.dec.com!decwrl!uunet!looking!clarinews
From: clarinews@clarinet.com
Newsgroups: clari.news.sex
Message-id: <Uoh-bikinicondom_28d@clarinet.com>
Subject: 2,500 condoms for women stolen
Keywords: criminal proceedings, legal, sex, human interest
Date: Sat, 1 Jun 91 13:26:24 EDT
Location: new jersey
ACategory: regional
Slugword: oh-bikinicondom
Priority: major
Format: regular
ANPA: Wc: 278; Id: j0235; Sel: yj--u; Adate: 6-1-130ped; Ver: sked
Approved: clarinews@clarinet.com
Codes: ynlarnj., ynhxrnj., xxxxxxxx
Note: (n.j.)

    warning for Windows noters -- the next reply is L-O-N-G

    A friend was nice enough to type in this whole article and send it to
    me.  I had not seen it, I don't have time to read the paper even on
    Sunday!  I think =wn= would be interested in it, so here it is.
    
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------
    
    	It was 29 years ago that I stumbled with all my bags and trunks into a
    dark, dismal room at the end of a long corridor in Shafer Hall and first
    laid eyes on Karen Lebacqz, my new roommate.

    	She hardly looked intimidating, huddled behind her guitar, singing folk
    songs in a soft, reed soprano.  Slight, maybe an inch or two taller that I
    was, she had sandy-brown hair, light green eyes, and a shy, gentle manner
    that I soon learned camouflaged the mind of a a tiger.  The daughter of a
    Belgian engineer and a woman who had given up an academic career to have
    children, Karen was only 17, a bashful kid, really, who had skipped her way
    through California schools.

    	Karen was one of the few in our class, the grapevine soon told me,
    whom the Wellesley College powers had already picked as most likely to walk
    away away with the top academic honors.  How right they were: Before we
    were through, four years later, Karen had been named Phi Beta Kappa, among
    other honors.  The surprise was that among a group of four of us who became
    friends - Karen, Sally Engle, Helen Cooper, and me - three would have that
    honor.

    	This weekend, with the exception of Karen, who will be in Thailand, our
    group will get together for the first time in 25 years, along with 175
    other members of the Class of 1966 who are returning to Wellesley for the
    class' 25th reunion.  In our late teens when we met, we are not 46 or 47,
    genuine mid-lifers.  We'll swear to you, of course, that we don't feel
    middle-aged, whatever that means.  But some numbers don't lie, and , like it
    or not, by the ticking of the years are more that halfway through life.

    	Collectively, ours is a story of some of the best educated women in
    history, women who came of age with the women's movement in the '60s and
    who have been struggling to balance feminist passions and a commitment to
    civil rights and social justice with all that has come along since.

    	We have, by now, accomplished a great deal of which we can - and do-
    feel proud.  And despite our commitment to careers, the greatest swell of
    pride for many of us comes from children, in whose blossoming we feel an
    almost mystical delight.  But there have also been, for many of us, roads
    not taken, adventures not pursued, men not married, babies not conceived.

    	Karen, for instance, has four books to her credit -five if you count the
    one she edited- and teaches Christian ethics at the Pacific School of
    Religion in Berkeley, California.  But her career has not been without
    cost: She feels sad that she didn't marry until relatively late in life
    and is now divorced.


    	Sally, a steady Quaker soul whose life course probably has run the
    straightest of our four paths, also has written several books.  She teaches
    anthropology at Wellesley, has a son and a daughter, and is married to the
    man who was her first blind date at Wellesley 29 years ago.  But she, too,
    has regrets, chiefly that she didn't join the Peace Corps when she had the
    chance, before marriage, babies, and tenure made conquering the world on
    her own an impossibility.

    	After Wellesley, Helen chose a life of radical politics, living in
    poverty to do community organizing in Cleveland and Los Angeles and
    spending the system than to making a personal commitment.  Now a California
    psychotherapist and still committed to social justice.  This, she says, is
    one reason she's still relatively poor:  For many clients, her fee is
    whatever they're able to pay.  Helen still wrestles with the fact that she
    did not marry her daughters' father.

    	I did choose the Peace Corps right after college and am now a medical
    writer at the Globe. I have one son, who graduates from college this month,
    and I'm happily ensconced in a second marriage.  But my early 30's, after my
    divorce, was a time of pain and loneliness, and if I had it to do all over
    again, I'd expunge those years from the record.

    	Last fall, two members of our class set out to discover where all of us
    had come in the years since Wellesley -both emotionally and professionally. 
    Kathleen Johnston and Joan Norris Boothe wrote a questionnaire and mailed it
    to the more than 400 class members whose addresses were known.  (We started
    out, in the fall of 1962, as a class of 482 women; by June 1966, we were
    401.)  Though the questionnaire -to which we responded anonymously- took
    several hours to complete, 64 percent of us, or 293 women, filled it out.

    	With with and sometimes startling insight, Johnston and Boothe asked
    about work, husbands, lovers, children, sex, politics, health, and the
    spiritual side of our still-evolving selves.  Their product is a 51-page
    minibook that is an almanac of humor, wisdom, regrets, confessions, and
    tidbits of knowledge from women who went out into the world a
    quarter-century ago -in many cases with no idea of what lay ahead.

    	About half of those who responded are now "very glad" to have gone to
    Wellesley, and a third are "glad."  A fifth, however, confess to feeling
    ambivalent or worse about our all-female educations.  (By and large, we we,
    we were pleased at the vibrant diversity Wellesley displayed during the
    Barbara Bush affair last June, when some students protested the choice of
    the president's wife, who is not a career woman, as commencement speaker. 
    In the wake of all this, incidentally, applications to Wellesley rose 8
    percent over the previous year, 17 percent among foreign applicants,
    perhaps in response to some of the 7,000 articles about the protest that
    appeared in newspapers and magazines around the world.)

    	By this state in life, Johnston and Boothe found, nearly half of us
    have experienced signs of menopause and about a third of us have had major
    surgery, mostly for female things -babies by Caesarean, hysterectomies,
    tube tyings, and removals of various lumps, benign and not so benign, from
    our breasts and ovaries.

    	Thirty-nine percent of us admit to coloring our hair; 28 percent own up
    to wearing bifocals.  On workday mornings, a quarter of us struggle into
    control-top panty hose to hide the alleged 9 pounds (on each hip?) we admit
    to having gained, on average, since graduation.

    	But if our bodies are starting to fall apart, by and large our
    marriages aren't. True, a quarter of us have been divorced for at least
    some portion of the 25 years since Wellesley, but a stunning 63 percent of
    us are still in our first marriages, and 11 percent in second marriages.
    Six percent of the women who responded to the questionnaire identify
    themselves as lesbians or bisexuals.

    	While 89 percent of us feel either "positive" or "very positive" about
    the marriages or committed relationships we're in, only 75 percent feel
    very positive or positive about our sex lives, a major reason for
    dissatisfaction being lack of a partner.

    	As with other items on the questionnaire, the ones on sex drew many
    scribbled comments in the margins, which Johnston and Boothe dutifully
    recorded for posterity.  Asked how often we have sex, the most common
    answer was once a week.  But one classmate penned, "None of your
    business."  Another wrote, "Four times a day, once a month -partner lives
    on opposite side of country."  Wrote yet another: Four times a week.  My
    husband says I can't count.  It's really 2."

    	Though we grew up in the '50s, we are clearly modern women now:  Though
    four-fifths of us have had children, 59 percent of us work full-time outside
    our homes, and 20 percent work part-time.  Only 14 percent of us are
    full-time homemakers, though 43 percent of us consider "home management"
    our second careers.

    	A resounding majority of us feel "very satisfied" with our primary
    careers -particularly women who are creative artists, professionals, and
    business managers, in that order.  The least satisfied are home managers
    and business staff.  We've also racked up an impressive amount of
    post-graduate training: 70 percent of us have advanced degrees.

    	For the record, we most admire Eleanor Roosevelt, Margaret Thatcher,
    and Mother Teresa, along with Martin Luther King Jr., Mutual Gorbachev,
    and Winston Churchill.  We read on average about 24 books a year and our
    clear recent favorite is Amy Tan's "The Joy Luck Club, a touching story
    about mothers and daughters.  We gobble up mysteries at a phenomenal rate,
    preferring the tales of Tony Hillerman, P.D. James, and Sara Paretsky above
    all others.  (We also like Anne Tyler, Margaret Atwood, and Barbara Pym.)

    	To no one's surprise, we are a relatively affluent group: 90 percent of
    us own our own homes, 38 percent earn over $50,000 a year, and 52 percent
    have family incomes in excess of $100,000, thank in large part to
    high-earning husbands.

    	We remain, however, surprisingly committed to the Populist ideals with
    which we were imbued in the 1960's.  We're staunchly Democratic (56 percent)
    and voted solidly for the losers, Michael Dukakis and Walter Mondale, in
    the last two presidential elections.  We work in our spare time for the
    environment, and 97 percent of us approve of abortion, at least in some
    circumstances. (A third of us have had an abortion.) Seventy-two percent
    call ourselves feminists.

    	But in a sense, this is the easy stuff.  Far more interesting than our
    accumulation of kudos, degrees, and bank accounts are the internal journeys
    we have taken in the years since Wellesley.  Our answers to spiritual
    questions and our scribbled margin notes throughout the questionnaire tell
    the inside story of the lives we've led, lives that have  had their share
    of pain and confusion.

    	Two-thirds of us have sought psychotherapy at some point in our lives,
    and many of us -20 percent- are seeing shrinks now.  A small number of us
    are on antidepressants and anti anxiety drugs.

    	Though we are, as a group, not very religious (we're Protestants, Jews,
    and Catholics, in that order) we do look actively for moral and spiritual
    guidance, usually turning to ourselves and our closest friends and
    relatives for help.

    	For many of us, it's a haphazard search.  One woman wrote that she is
    "not systematic" but looks "everywhere" for spiritual help:  "I'm rather
    lost."  Another looks within herself in times of trouble, adding, "I
    believe God is everywhere."  Sixteen percent of our class practice
    "non-traditional spirituality," including astrology, meditation, New Age
    beliefs, and psychic readings.  Ten percent of us say we have participated
    in 12-step programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon, and 19
    percent are affiliated with "support groups" in general.

    	We also take shortcuts:  A third of us drink regularly and more than
    half of us occasionally.  Otherwise, we're a pretty strait-laced bunch: 
    Nearly half of us tried pot in the old days, but we don't touch it now, and
    hardly anyone admits to cocaine use.  We do pop vitamins, and a growing
    number -12 percent take estrogen supplements.

    	But I suspect we come closest to some of the truths about ourselves
    when answering the toughest of Johnston and Boothe's questions: "What
    things don't you want to admit to your classmates?"

    	`More than a few women answered with statements such as "I hate this
    questionnaire" and "Why would anyone want to answer this question?"  More
    than half skipped the question altogether.  But some were candid.  "I live
    with the omnipresent sense of not measuring up," wrote one woman.  "That I
    no longer sleep with my husband, don't like him very well, but am staying
    with him for the sake of the kids," wrote another.  Another penned, "I
    don't have a master's -I'm a dependent woman screaming to be liberated."

    	"I was molested as a child.  It's taken me years to recover from
    feeling like a failure after Wellesley," confessed one woman.  "The number
    of nervous breakdowns I've had," wrote another.

    	When asked what we would not like to admit to our own families, even
    fewer answered, but among the admissions were:  "That I'm having an
    affair," that "I get tired of being responsible for everyone's
    happiness/stability/whatever.  I wish someone would take care of me?" and
    that "I haven't balanced my checkbook in 20 years."

    	Some women wrote of being victims of the violence that has become a
    part of modern life: 14 percent of us have been mugged on the street, 5
    percent have been raped( in 69 percent of these cases, by a person we
    knew), and 6 percent have been beaten by a husband or significant other.

    	A tine minority of 1 -1 percent- admits to beating up on a husband or
    significant other.  Wrote one, "I used to hit my first husband -didn't make
    a dent- I would hardly call it beating." Another said, "Only emotionally,
    but I'm ashamed of how badly."

    	We have also been all-too-frequent victims of other crimes: 39 percent
    of us have had our homes robbed, and 28 percent of us now have household
    security systems.  Eight percent of us own guns, though none has ever shot
    at anyone.

    	But more than the aggregate experience of the Class of 1966, the
    stories of individual women tell how our lives were shaped by Wellesley,
    the '60s, the women's movement, and one another.  In our foursome -Karen,
    Sally, Helen, and me- what strikes me is the way we began to weave the
    theme of social justice into one another's lives at Wellesley and how
    persistent that theme has been since.

    	For Karen, a Bible major at Wellesley and now an ordained minister,
    social-justice themes have permeated virtually all of her teaching and
    writing, especially her four books on ethics and theories of social
    justice.  Her latest, she jokes, called Sex and the Paris, is "the one I
    expect to make me rich and famous.  If this book doesn't sell, nothing I
    write will."

    	One of her major concerns is the sexual abuse of power by clergy who,
    like psychotherapists, "gain deep access to a person's psyche and life,"
    she says.  "For a lot of people who don't go to shrinks, the pastor is the
    person they go to and to whom they reveal the most intimate, the most
    painful, most damaging parts of themselves.  To take advantage of that is
    an egregious sin."

    	Similar conviction sizzled through the long-distance telephone lines
    when I caught up with Helen for the first time in years.  Although we lost
    touch after my time in the Peace Corps, I still feel grateful to her for
    bringing me muffins nearly every morning for four years at Wellesley so I
    could sleep through breakfast.

    	Perhaps more than any of us, Helen has lived a life of passionate
    commitment to social justice.  The daughter of a "Stevenson-type Democrat:
    and a "pretty liberal" woman, she developed a social conscience early,
    growing up in Virginia and later in Balboa Heights, in the Panama Canal
    Zone.  In Virginia, before the Supreme Court's desegregation ruling, she
    recalls, "I was going to a segregated school, and I would see bus-loads of
    black children going somewhere else.  My parents were strongly against
    racism, but I was aware other people didn't think that way.  I remember in
    second grade the teacher saying it was okay to be polite to Negroes but
    never to have dinner with them."

    	At Wellesley, Helen found a kindred spirit in Sally, who came from a
    Philadelphia Quaker family.  (To me, that was the second-most intriguing
    thing about Sally.  The first was that she arrived at Wellesley with her
    identical sister Patty.)  With her calm brown eyes and shoulder-length
    black hair, Sally become my metronome and, for years after Wellesley, my
    best friend.  If Helen kept me fed, Sally kept me studying.  Like
    clockwork, every night after dinner, Sally simply went to her room, picked
    up her green book bag, and headed to the library to be there when it
    reopened shortly after 7.  To succeed at Wellesley, all I had to do was ask
    Sally to wait for me, walk with her to the library, and stay there with her
    until the closing bell.  Once there, there wasn't much to do but study.

    	As with Helen, by the time Sally arrived at Wellesley, she already
    possessed a social conscience, having spent weekends during high school
    working in the ghettos of Philadelphia.  "It was fascinating," she recalled
    recently.  "I was helping people fix up their houses, seeing how
    differently other people lived."  After high school she went to a Quaker
    work camp in Missouri, working with cotton pictures.  "It was 1962, the
    beginning of the civil rights issues.  I went to a big civil rights march
    in Cairo, Illinois.  I could feel the hostility of the Southern whites
    against us Northern whites and the black demonstrators."

    	At Wellesley, Sally's interest in civil rights evolved into a major and
    ultimately a career in anthropology.  It also led to two books, Urban
    Danger, about a Boston housing project, and Getting Justice and Getting
    Even, about legal consciousness among working-class Americans.

    	Together, Sally and Helen ran the student civil rights group in our
    college days, a collaboration that Helen, who has always been bothered by
    Wellesley's elitist image, still recalls as pivotal: "It was so important
    that there were other people at Wellesley who had ideals similar to mine."

    	My friends' developing beliefs in social justice were vine more
    eye-opening for me.  I had grown up in a suburban Republican household in
    Westchester County, New York.  My father was a business executive, my
    mother a volunteer in community affairs.  They imbued me with a love of
    learning and a passionate wanderlust.  But I arrived at Wellesley a
    political naif.

    	Sally and Helen soon had me tutoring in Roxbury, and Sally's adventure
    one summer in Africa inspired me to take a bold leap after graduation and
    spend three years in the Peace Corps.  As I flew off to Brazil with my
    husband of several months, Sally left to work with the Navajo Indians, and
    Karen took up residence at Harvard for graduate school.

    	Helen moved on to work at Bruno Bettelheim's Orthogenic School for
    disturbed children at the University of Chicago, then to study for a
    master's in social work from the University of Michigan, where she met and
    fell in love with a political radical who was leading the Students for a
    Democratic Society group at Michigan.  "We got involved with the National
    Welfare Rights Organization, a grass-roots organization designed to help
    welfare recipients become empowered to make changes in the welfare system,"
    Helen recalls.  They were arrested several times during welfare-rights
    demonstrations -a badge of honor in those days.  Eventually Helen followed
    her man to Los Angeles, where for 10 years they lived together, had two
    daughters, and eked out a living as best they could, trying to keep to
    their Populist value systems.

    	Today she supports her daughters alone and works as a psychotherapist
    in Pasadena, California.  She explains her liberal fee structure in simple
    terms: "It's very important to me to be available to people who don't have
    money."

    	After the Peace Corps, the birth of my son, and a stint as a teacher, I
    discovered that journalism was a way to hang on to many of my ideals while
    following a professional track.  I still feel that much of the idealism
    that got me into the profession nearly two decades ago, an idealism that
    translates into a strong belief that the public has a right to know as much
    as possible about what goes on in science labs, doctors' offices, and
    hospitals.

    	But if all four of us, like many of our classmates, can now point with
    pride to professional paths that make sense and feel good, we also
    recognize the prices we've paid.  Says Karen, "I think all my life I will
    have a sense of wistfulness at not ever having had children."

    	And Helen struggles with whether she's ready to let it be known that
    her 10-year relationship didn't culminate in marriage.  "Early on, it
    seemed like the thing to do, not getting married," she says.  "It was an
    anti-Establishment position.  but at some point I wanted to get married,
    and he was basically not willing or able to make a commitment."  She now
    feels brave enough to let the world think what it will about her choices. 
    "although it was never sanctified religiously or legal," she says, "it was
    a marriage to me."

    	For all four of us, it's clear now -in a way that it wasn't at the
    time- that the years we spend together in college were life-shaping.  "Even
    though I rejected some of Wellesley's values," says Helen, "I felt
    Wellesley didn't reject me.  there was something about the small size and
    the integrity that really helped.  There really was an atmosphere of
    respect for the individual.""

    	We all feel grateful for Wellesley's women teachers, the role models
    who taught us more by who they were than by the contents of their lectures 
    "I've gone into teaching," says Karen, "and let me tell you, when I was a
    graduate student I had no women teachers.  All my role models were women I
    had at Wellesley.

    	"Do you remember Annemarie Shimony [then and now a professor of
    anthropology]?  Her total dedication to her subject?  She'd come flying
    into the classroom, throw down a huge armload of books.  She always wore
    clothes that were out of fashion. ... She didn't wear makeup.  It seemed
    like she was often eight months' pregnant, and she taught right up to the
    time she went to the hospital," says Karen.

    	Now, at mid-life, all of us admit to some sense of the "crisis" the
    books say we should be having at this point, a crisis perhaps born of
    success we never thought we would have.  Sally puts it most succinctly: "I
    think it's that we are all people who have set goals for ourselves, and now
    what do you do when there's no goal to struggle for, when you have
    accomplished what you set out to do?  I have worked all these years, and
    now I should enjoy it.  But it doesn't feel nice to me.  I liked the
    struggle and the challenge.  I'm not quite ready to say, "Okay, the
    comfortable life is right here.'"

    	I suspect most of the Class of 1966 agrees.  We may seem ancient to our
    children, but we are,. after all, still only halfway through.  With our
    child-rearing responsibilities increasingly behind us, our best
    professional years may be yet to come.

    	But as we begin the next phase of our lives, we are different women
    from those we were.  We've grown, learned, stumbled, grieved, and rejoiced
    now for 25 years.  "I'm much less snobbish," said one woman.  "I grow more
    liberal all the time," concluded another.  A third said, "I'm more
    conservative.  I see so much stupid and lazy waste by folks claiming to be
    in need and have trouble feeling sorry for them."

    	We have learned, the hard way, to be a bit easier on ourselves.  As one
    classmate put it, "I do not worry about 'what other people think'
    -appearances."  Another said, "I do the things that make me feel good about
    myself.  NO more 'people pleasing.'"

    	We have often been pleasantly surprised by how things have turned out. 
    A classmate said, "I thought I would be an executive wife, not an executive
    myself.  I didn't conceive of myself as a person who could make things
    happen."

    	With my classmates in the crowded chapel this weekend at Wellesley will
    be alumnae from other classes.  Some will be using canes.  Others will have
    white hair.  On the other side of the chapel the new alumnae will sit,
    their faces bright and fresh, ready to follow their own paths, but, in a
    sense, our footsteps, too.

    	As the reunion weekend progresses, I am sure that one nugget, penned by
    a classmate, will reverberate through my mind -a distillation of 25 years'
    worth of living.  I offer it here: "Number 1, don't sweat the small stuff. 
    Number 2, everything is small stuff."

    Thank you for this.  It has touched me in a way that I cannot describe,
    except to say that both my mother and grandmother were Wellesley alums,
    I wanted to go there (and wasn't accepted), and have reached a point in
    my life where the emotions expressed and the journey taken parallels
    what was written.  I feel less alone.
    
    Alison

From: clarinews@clarinet.com
Newsgroups: clari.news.sex,clari.news.military,clari.news.top
Subject: Soldier convicted of violating safe sex order
Keywords: sex, human interest, army, military
Date: Sun, 30 Jun 91 12:59:10 EDT
Approved: clarinews@clarinet.com


	FORT EUSTIS, Va. (UPI) -- A soldier who was HIV-positive was sentenced
to 15 years in prison for disobeying a military safe sex order by
exposing five women to the deadly AIDS virus.
	Spec. Kenneth Schoolfield, 24, of Columbus, Ohio, was also busted to
buck private, stripped of all military benefits and dishonorably
discharged. His case will be automatically appealed under military law.
	The primary charges against Schoolfield were aggravated assault,
brought by prosecutors because of his infected condition.
	Schoolfield dodged a conviction for rape by introducing a videotape
he made of one of the sex acts, but it damaged his innocent plea to
disobeying orders because in the videotape -- shown in court -- he was not
wearing a condom.
	The Army routinely orders HIV-positive soldiers to either abstain or
engage only in safe sex practices -- and to notify sex partners of the
infection. The court-martial was part of an Army crackdown to enforce
the orders.
	Testimony showed none of the women have tested positive for the
virus.
	The charges stem from incidents involving five women in Hampton,
Newport News and Fort Eustis dating back to 1989. Schoolfield, who was
declared borderline mentally retarded in testimony, joined the Army in
1986 and first tested positive for the virus in late 1988.
	The videotape, and testimony, showed Schoolfield having consentual
sex with one partner, who became alarmed when he handcuffed her to the
bed and yelled:
	``You're hurting me, you're hurting me. Stop, Schoolfield, you're
hurting me.''
	The chief prosecutor, Capt. Paul Sausville, said at Saturday's end of
the trial he hoped to set a precedent with the rape charge.
	``A woman should have the right to withdraw consent,'' Sausville
said. ``We were hoping to set a precedent. It didn't work.''
	Defense attorney Greg McCormack argued that the woman never resisted
and the military judge, Col. Howard Eggers, reduced the charge to
committing an indecent act.
	Schoolfield was convicted of 11 counts of disobeying the safe sex
order, seven counts of aggravated assault, one charge of consensual
sodomy, one count of attempted consensual sodomy and one count of
committing an indecent act. He had faced a maximum of 88 years in
prison.

    
    Hi!
    
    I'm not sure where to put this, but thought it might interest
    this community.  Someone sent it to me from a bulletin board:
    
       It's    It's a cartographer dream, or nightmare.  The Magellan
    spacecraft's
    imaging radar is mapping the surface of Venus and someone has to name
    the 4000 or more features that are likely to be identified.  So the
    scientists of the Magellan Project at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
    long with the Flagstaff, Ariz., office of the U.S. Geological Survey,
    have appealed to the world for suggestions.
    
       Since previous agreements have made the International Astronomical
    Union the supreme authority of solar system nomenclature, the
    suggestions must follow the union's rules:  all newly discovered
    features must be named after women; some features can be named after
    goddesses of ancient religions and cultures; and craters are to be
    named for real, notable women, deceased for at least three years.
    Prohibited are 19th and 20th century political and military figures
    and women prominent in any of the six main, modern religions.
    
       The team needs the dates of the woman's birth and death, a one- or
    two-sentence rationale of her historical importance, and, if
    available, a reference book citation.
    
       Contact:
                    Venus Names
                    Magellan Project Office
                    Mail Stop 230-201
                    Jet Propulsion Laboratory
                    4800 Oak Grove Dr.
                    Pasadena, Calif 91109
    

    Seen in this morning's Boston Globe:
    
    Man held in rape has rapist record
    
    York, Maine--A man charged with raping and slashing a 15-year-old girl
    was on early release from prison although he was diagnosed 10 years ago
    as a "psychopathic deviant" who posed a danger to society, court
    documents show.  David G. Fleming, 33, of Saco, remained in the York
    County Jail yesterday, charged with attempted murder, kidnapping and
    gross sexual assault in last Friday's attack.  Fleming pleaded guilty
    to two rapes committed in 1979, and was sentenced in 1980 to 15 years
    in prison.  Fleming was released five years early for good behavior,
    prison officials said.
                

    
    (From memory - on the radio this morning)
    
    The British Home Officer is taking steps to try and control the
    transcripts of victim's court statements and medical examinations
    which are known to circulate in prisons where they are used as
    pornography.
    
    The new measures will include keeping the records in a central
    depository where inmates will have to sign for access, and
    removing the names and addresses from the statements.
    
    Recently prisoners have been found with such "pornography" relating
    to their particular sex offence - one paedophile was found with
    a video of a child's statment in court.
    
                       ******************
    
    'gail

    
    (From memory - on the radio this morning...)
    
    The British Home Office are to take action to curb the circulation
    of victim's court statements and medical examination notes within
    prisons. Apparently it is well-known by probation officers that
    these documents are used as pornography within prisons.
    
    New measures suggest keeping the documents in a central place where
    inmates will have to sign to read them, and removing the names
    and addresses from the documents.
    
    Police officers have expressed concern that telling the public
    that these documents are used as pornography by sex offenders
    in jails will discourage people from coming forward to report
    sexual crimes, or from pressing charges.
    
    One paedophile was found with a video of a child in a witness
    box describing her ordeal.
    
    'gail

     The Liberty Basketball Association, a women's professional league, 
will begin play this December. The LBA marks the first attempt to establish 
a U.S. Women's Pro Basketball League since 1984. Players salaries will be 
$250 per game, with an extra $100 going to the winners, according to 
Matrix. In Japan and Europe, top women players make between $50,000 and 
$200,000 per year. Check ESPN for listing of televised games.

                                 - courtesy Hotwire magazine

    In October, 1991, the American Women's TransAnarctic Expidition team 
will traverse the frozen continent. The five women will be distinguised as 
the First Women To Cross Antarctica On Ski's, pulling their own supplies 
without the use of dogs or machines. The leader of the expidition is Ann 
Bancroft, the first known woman to reach the North Pole on foot, and with 
this expidition she will become the first known woman to reach both poles. 

    For information, or offer of $$$ support: American Women's 
                        Trans-Antarctic Expidition
                        2334 University Ave. #170
                        St. Paul, MN  55114

                         
                                       - courtesy Hotwire

Article 446 of misc.activism.progressive:
Path: nntpd.lkg.dec.com!news.crl.dec.com!deccrl!decwrl!apple!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wupost!mont!rich
From: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
Subject: AI: Women Refugees
Message-ID: <1991Aug14.015844.3212@pencil.cs.missouri.edu>
Date: 14 Aug 91 01:58:44 GMT
Sender: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Organization: PACH
Lines: 265
Approved: map@pencil.cs.missouri.edu

/** gen.women: 197.0 **/
** Topic: Women Refugees **
** Written  3:06 pm  Aug  9, 1991 by loceguera in cdp:gen.women **
From: <loceguera>
Subject: Women Refugees
 
/* Escrito 10:48 pm  Jun 28, 1991 por aicoord en cdp:ai.refugee */
/* ---------- "Women Refugees" ---------- */
WOMEN REFUGEES
 
Amnesty International USA Issue Brief
 
***************************************************************
Amnesty International work for the protection of refugees
 
Amnesty International's work for the protection of refugees
derives directly from it prisoner related concerns. The
organization opposes the forcible return of any person to a
country where he or she might reasonably be expected to be
imprisoned as a prisoner of conscience, tortured ot executed.
 
Amnesty International's refugee work also derives from the
principle of "non-refoulement", set out in Article 33 of the
1951 UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees which
prohibits the return of refugees and asylum-seekers to any
territory where their life or freedom would be threatened on
account of their race, religion, nationality, membership of
a particular social group or political opinion.
 
****************************************************************
 
Despite the fact that women make up more than half the world's
refugees according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees
(UNHCR), little has been done by the international community
to deal with them as women in a particular situation and with
particular needs. International instruments relevant to the
protection of refugees make no distinction between male and
female refugees. They do not deal with the problem of persecution
against women as women.
 
****************************************************************
 
Flight From Persecution
 
Women may be sexually assaulted or otherwise persecuted by
national authorities, not only because of their own beliefs
or activities, but also in order to harm their husbands or
families. In addition, women may also leave their countries due
to fear of retribution on account of their human rights
activities, when they have pressured their government to account
for relatives who have disappeared.
 
It was not until 1985 that the Executive Committee of the UNHCR
discussed the particular protection needs of women refugees.
In an article published in 1988, a legal advisor to the UNHCR
described his findings about the special vulnerabilities of
women refugees to several forms of abuse. Women refugees and
asylum-seekers had been victims of sexual abuse by police,
soliders or other government agents. Many women lacked the support
systems which would be provided in their own communities or
by their close relatives. Upon leaving their country,
 
        "Rape, abduction, sexual harassment, physical
        violence and the not infrequent obligation to
        grant 'sexual favors' in return for documentation
        and/or relief goods remain a distressing reality
        for many women refugees along escape routes and
        in border areas, camps, settlements and urban
        centers."
 
Obtaining Protection
 
Women refugees have been at risk of abuses when confined in
detention centers or camps in the country of refuge prior to
determination of their status. In 1989 there were reports of
assaults of detained Vietnamese women seeking asylum in
Hong Kong. Women were intimidated , kicked, and beaten for no
particular reason by the police.
 
No government of agency would suggest that a woman who is
persecuted for reasons of her race, religion, nationality,
membership in a particular social group or for her political
opinions, is any less a refugee than her male counterpart.
Problems may arise, however, in a woman's ability to obtain
asylum. She might have problems telling a male interviewer
about her experiences (few countries have female staff
involved in their refugee determination). A woman who has
been subjected to sexual assault thus may find it more
difficult to establish her claim than a man. (See the case
of Catalina Mejia.)
 
In October 1990, the Executive Committee of the UNHCR urged
states and UN bodies to promote measures for improving the
protection of women. The UNHCR recommended providing female
interviewers in procedures to determine refugee status,
issuing individual, rather than family, identity documents
to refugee women, ensuring that resettlement programs make
special provisions for women at risk, and identifying and
prosecuting people who have committed crimes against refugee
women. The committee called the development of comprehensive
guidelines for the protection of refugee women to be a
matter of urgency.
 
Amnesty International's Recommendations
 
Amnesty International's report "Women on the Front Line",
presents several recommendations to protect women's human
rights. Included are stopping rape by government agents,
halting persecution of women because of family connections,
ratifying international instruments for the protection of
human rights, and preventing human rights violations against
women refugees and asylum seekers.
 
With respect to women refugees:
 
* No woman, nor any other asylum-seeker, should be forcibly
returned to a country where she can reasonably be expected
to be imprisoned as a prisoner of conscience, tortured or
executed.
 
* In procedures for the determination of refugee status
governments should provide interviewers trained to recognize
the specific protection needs of women refugees and asylum-
seekers.
 
* Governments should thoroughly and impartially investigate
human rights violations, including torture and ill-treatment,
committed against refugee women and asylum-seekers in the
country of asylum, and bring to justice those responsible.
 
****************************************************************
 
Women Asylum Seekers in the United States
 
Women refugees in the western hemisphere face many of the
problems described in this issue brief. Women in Central
America may have fled sexual abuse or threats to their lives
from their country's security forces. Many experience further
abuse in their flight to safety. Finally, their stories may
not be accepted as justification for the granting of refugee
status. When denied asylum, they are placed in danger of return
to further abuse. A Haitian woman refugee testified before a
US immigration judge in 1988 that armed men abducted her
husband and assaulted her so severely that she had miscarried
and required hospital treatment. Yet the judge replied after
hearing her case, "I still don't understand, even with all
that, why [you felt] you had to leave your country." He
denied her asylum claim and she was deported.
 
Another case is that of Catalina Mejia, a refugee from El
Salvador, whose asylum claim is currently on appeal.
 
Catalina Mejia is a dress-maker from the province of Usulutan,
one of the areas of El Salvador particularly affected by
the 11-year-old conflict. The military suspected her family
of giving food to the armed opposition. One night in January
1983, soldiers entered her family's home and said they were
looking for weapons. They forced Catalina Mejia and her family
to lie face down. The soldiers accused the family of being
guerrillas, but the family denied it. One soldier grabbed
Catalina Mejia, ordered her outside at gunpoint, accused her
of being a "guerrilla" and then raped her. Subsequently, on
two occasions Catalina Mejia was stopped at military check
points in other parts of El Salvador. At each check point she
was singled out by soldiers who accused her of being a
"guerrilla"; they let her go only after people waiting at the
check point, intervened. Thereafter she fled to the United
States.
 
The Immigration Judge denied Catalina Mejia's application
for political asylum in August 1988. The judge stated in
her decision that she listened carefully to the lengthy
testimony and observed the demeanor of Catalina Mejia, "and
I find her to be altogether credible." But the judge ruled
that she had failed to establish that she would be at risk
of persecution if returned to El Salvador.
 
One of the reasons given by the judge for this decision was
that the rape of Catalina Mejia by a solider who accused her
of being a "guerrilla" was not an act of persecution but
"was more because she was female convenient to a brutal
solider acting only in his own self interest." Catalina
Mejia's appeal to the US Board of Immigration Appeals, against
the Judge's decision, was pending in December 1990.
 
Although Amnesty International is not in a position to confirm
all the details of this case, it is consistent with many
other cases which have been reported to the organization and
with the organization's knowledge of the situation in El
Salvador. Over the past decade Amnesty International has
documented a consistent pattern of gross human rights violations
in El Salvador, including large numbers of cases of torture,
"disappearance" and extrajudicial execution (see for example,
El Salvador: Killings, Torture and "Disappearances", October
1990, AI Index AMR 29/27/90). People suspected of sympathizing
with the armed opposition have been tortured, and on many
occasions rape has been used as a method of torture. The rape
described by Catalina Mejia, in circumstances where the
soldier accused her of being a "guerrilla" and then raped her
amounts to torture. Torture is defined in the UN Convention
Against Torture as any act by which severe pain or suffering,
whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted by any
government agent for purposes such as punishing or intimidating.
 
Women in El Salvador have been raped by police or soldiers
while being held in detention or during searches of homes or
villages. For example, seven women, among them trade unionists,
alleged that they were raped by Salvadoran security officers
in September 1989 following their arrest at a demonstration.
In July 1990 a woman said that she was beaten and raped
several times by Salvadoran soldiers when they searched her
home looking for a gun.
 
Assuming as the immigration judge did, that the facts presented
in Catalina Mejia's asylum application are true, Amnesty
International considers that Catalina Mejia would be at risk
of human rights violations if returned to El Salvador.
 
****************************************************************
 
ACT NOW!
 
Please write courteously worded letters to the US Attorney
General:
 
* expressing concern about the denial of asylum to Catalina
Mejia (file number A27 652 505), who Amnesty International
believes, on the basis of testimony which the Immigration
Judge accepted as credible, would be at risk of human rights
violations if returned to El Salvador.;
 
* expressing concern that one of the reasons given by the
immigration judge for denying asylum was the judge's view
that the rape of Catalina Mejia by a soldier who accused
her of being a "guerrilla" was not an act of persecution
but was the self-interested act of an individual. On the
contrary, such rape amounts to torture as defined in the
United Nations Convention Against Torture, and Amnesty
International has documented many such cases where rape
has been used as a method of torture by Salvadoran soldiers
and police;
 
* acknowledging that Salvadorans may be eligible to re-open
their asylum claims should they wish to take advantage of
the stipulated agreement in American Baptist Churches v.
Thornburgh, but expressing concern that, should she re-file
her claim, the INS may misinterpret the danger Ms. Mejia faces
once again.
 
* urging that the Attorney General use his discretion to
ensuring that Catalina Mejia is recognized as a refugee and
so given legal protection against being forcibly returned
to El Salvador.
 
Write to:
 
Attorney General Dick Thornburgh
Department of Justice
10th St. & Constitution Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20530
USA
 
Fax: 202 633 4371
** End of text from cdp:gen.women **
 

    From the Boston Globe, Friday, August 30, 1991.  Page 3.
    
    RESEARCHER FINDS CLUE IN BRAINS OF GAY MEN
    
    Reports differnce in nucleus linked to sex
    
    By Dolores Kong (Globe Staff)
    
    In a finding that hints at a biological basis for homosexuality, a
    researcher has found a difference in the brains of gay men and straight
    men.
    
    A microscopically small part of the brain stem that regulates sexual
    drive was found to be different in heterosexual men compared with the
    same part in homosexual men or heterosexual women, the researcher
    reports today in the journal Science.
    
    While the researcher said he could not conclude from the study whether
    the difference was the origin or the result of homosexuality, he
    suggested that it probably "is established early in life and later
    influences sexual behavior."
    
    The study, based on brain tissue from autopsies of 41 men and women,
    more than half of whom died of AIDS, is considered preliminary because
    of its size and because it needs to be repeated by other researchers.
    
    The neuroscientist who did the research, Simon LeVay of the Salk
    Institute for Biological Studies in Sasn Diego, Calif., acknowledged in
    his study that there are several limitations.  Since most of the brain
    tissue was donated by people who died of AIDS, there is a chance that
    the disease skewed the results.  The determination of the sexual
    orientation of the men and women were [sic] based on either death
    certificate information or inferred from circumstantial evidence, and
    no brain tissue was available from lesbians.
    
    [The article continues, describing the nature of the evidence found and
    the preliminary conclusions drawn therefrom.]

Article: 553
Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
From: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
Subject: UNCED: Women's role 'not yet taken into account'
Sender: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
Organization: PACH
Date: Fri, 30 Aug 1991 04:08:07 GMT
 
/** gen.women: 211.0 **/
** Topic: Women's role - UNCED, Brazil **
** Written 10:51 pm  Aug 20, 1991 by agarton in cdp:gen.women **
/* Written  7:27 pm  Aug 17, 1991 by rpollard in peg:en.unced.news */
Women's role 'not yet taken into account'
 
CONCERN that the roles and needs of women have not yet been
properly taken into account by UNCED has led to the drawing up of
a statement by NGOs to be presented to the current PrepCom.
 
The concern is underlined by a paper prepared by Filomina Steady,
the Secretariat`s special adviser on women in environment and
development, which points out that only one basic document at the
previous PrepCom dealt with gender issues to any extent.
 
Unless the role of women is treated as a cross-sectoral issue, says
the draft statement, the objectives of Agenda 21 and the Earth
Charter will not be met.
 
It also sounds the alert on UNCED`s failure to build on previous
work within the UN system. The PrepCom 2 discussion on management
of solid waste and sewage-related issues, for example, did not take
into account the New Delhi Statement which highlighted the need to
assure the participation of women in the protection of the
environment and health. The Delhi Statement was endorsed by the
General Assembly resolution marking the Global Consultation on Safe
Water and Sanitation for the 1990s.
 
The NGO statement draws particular attention to the need to promote
sustainable development as a way of alleviating at source the
large-scale movement of economic and environmental refugees.
 
It recommends that where specific actions are identified by UNCED,
women must be included in the process of planning and
implementation. In addition, the impact on women and children of
proposed measures towards sustainable development must be assessed.
 
NGO representatives are invited to sign the statement. Copies are
available in the CONGO office in the Palais, Room A 580.
 
Demilitarisation, development and environment
 
The CONGO Planning Committee for NGO Activities in Relation to
UNCED is holding a three-day colloquium: Can the environment be
saved without a radical new approach to world development? On
August 13, it will focus on demilitarisation, environment and
development; on August14 it will be devoted to the development
component within the Earth Charter; and on August 15 the
discussions will be about the linkage between demilitarisation and
development. This colloquium is open to all and will be held from
6-10 pm in Room XII of the Palais des Nations.
** End of text from cdp:gen.women **
 

Article: 552
Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
From: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
Subject: European socialist feminists meet
Sender: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
Organization: PACH
Date: Fri, 30 Aug 1991 04:08:21 GMT
 
/** gen.women: 217.0 **/
** Topic: 1. European socialist feminists **
** Written  5:19 pm  Aug 27, 1991 by greenleft in cdp:gen.women **
East and West meet, with some difficulties
 
By Sally Low
 
Control over women, no matter what social order we live in, is an 
important pillar of that order. If all the hundred or so women at 
the conference of the European Forum of Socialist Feminists in 
June agreed on anything, perhaps it was this.
 
Under the broad theme of Women and Citizenship, representatives 
from most West European countries (and one from Australia!) 
except France and Italy, met with women from the former German 
Democratic Republic, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Yugoslavia 
and the USSR in Norwich, England.
 
So diverse were the experiences and perspectives from each 
country that the many issues raised could not be properly 
explored during the two days available. Women from Eastern Europe 
were coming to grips with the effects of the transformations in 
their countries and, in most instances, only just starting to 
organise independently as women, while those from Western Europe 
were overwhelmingly concerned with the effects of European 
Economic Union in 1992.
 
On the last day of the conference, Olga Lipovskaya from Russia 
chose to address not her sisters but her cousins from Western 
Europe.
 
According to Lipovskaya, important and painful differences had 
emerged: on the family, on the very words ``socialist'' and 
``feminist'' and on their meaning. She stressed that these 
differences had to be approached from a position of equality and 
mutual respect; they arose because ``we lead fundamentally 
different lives.
 
``Of course we have certain needs from each other and definitely 
the Eastern European sisters/cousins are much less experienced in 
feminist theory and ideology, but on the other hand we are much 
more down to earth and our problems seem to me to be much more 
real.''
 
For example, she could see the relevance of trying to rid 
language of its sexist bias, but such concerns were ``too far 
from the immediate concerns of women in the Soviet Union''.
 
Several of the women from Eastern and Central Europe wanted the 
forum to change its name because, they said, both feminism and 
socialism are regarded with hostility in their countries. This 
led to a passionate debate.
 
Some, from England in particular, said the name differentiates 
them from other strands of the feminist movement with whom they 
have sharp ideological differences. Others felt strongly that to 
change the name would be to give in to anti-feminist and anti-
socialist propaganda. ``Left feminist'' and ``international 
feminist'' were suggested as a compromise, but finally it was 
decided to postpone the decision until the next conference, to be 
held in Belgium in 1992.
 
From within the eastern countries, there were also varying 
perspectives. A member of the Independent Women's Association in 
the former GDR described how during the ``short but intensive'' 
revolutionary period in the autumn of 1989 ``there was a growing 
desire to examine and explore the lives of women [and] people 
talked about establishing a human, feminist and socialist 
society.
 
``The emancipation model of the one-party ruling system was based 
on the assimilation of women and men to male standards. The 
female image changed while the male remained stable. Such a 
policy only considered women rather than women and men.
 
``Our orientation was to heterosexual relationships, marriage and 
children. We believed in and lived the myth of equality.''
 
Zarana Papic from Belgrade and Anne Rossiter, a woman from the 
Republic of Ireland who lives in England, presented quite 
different views on the role of nationalism.
 
According to Papic, the ``enormous growth of nationalism'' in 
Yugoslavia has not led to pluralist democracy but to ``the 
pluralisation of nationalisms''. Under the overwhelming weight of 
nationalist ideology, women have been almost entirely excluded 
from the political process, and traditional conservative 
attitudes towards women are often stressed.
 
Rossiter replied that, in the case of Ireland and other oppressed 
nations, ``nationalism is often the only democratic impulse we 
can follow. Of course enormous problems are caused by 
nationalism, but we have to operate within that discourse.''
 
Avtar Brah, a member of the Indian community in Britain, said 
that she and other black women had to deal with ``struggles 
against racism and struggles within our communities against 
patriarchal oppression''. To do this, black women had to organise 
separately and combat the notion that to raise the issue of 
sexism within their communities was to break ranks and to fuel 
racist stereotyping and attacks.
 
Women from various communities in England have formed Women 
Against Fundamentalism, whose first action was a counter-
demonstration against Muslims calling for the death of Salman 
Rushdie. Their main slogan was: ``Our tradition, struggle not 
submission''.
 
Violence against women and the feminisation of poverty were 
common concerns in countries as diverse as the USSR, Sweden, 
Turkey and Czechoslovakia. Generally, increased violence was seen 
as a result of economic and political uncertainty.
 
European Economic Union in 1992 was often referred to as 
``Fortress Europe'' - not only a trading bloc but also a means by 
which migrants, particularly from former European colonies, will 
be kept out and discriminated against. Already in France, England 
and Italy, leading government officials have made statements in 
support of tougher laws on political asylum, repatriation of so-
called ``illegals'' and reduced immigration. This has encouraged 
growing racism within most West European countries.
 
In the Nordic countries, where the question of joining the EC is 
being discussed, women fear that membership will weaken the 
better than average social services and social security. Women 
from some Nordic and small central European nations said they 
also feared their national identities would be 
lost.
 
************************************************************
 
Reprinted from Green Left, weekly progressive newspaper. May 
be reproduced with acknowledgment but without charge by 
movement publications and organisations.
** End of text from cdp:gen.women **
 

    Gay couples get family benefits at Lotus
    
    By Bruce D. Butterfield
    Globe Staff
    
    In what appears to be the first such move by a major American company,
    Lotus Development Corp. yesterday said it has begun offering a full
    range of family benefits to so-called "spousal equivalents" of gay and
    lesbian employees.
    
    Advocates of gay and lesbian rights heralded the move, noting it is
    ground-breaking in terms of extending the same benefit rights to
    homosexual couples living together as to married couples in the
    corporate work force.
    
    "This is very, very significant for a company like Lotus to take this
    step," said William B. Rubinstein, director of the American Civil
    Liberties Union's Lesbian and Gay Rights Project in New York.  He
    predicte4d it woll prompt other companies to consider adopting similar
    policies.
    
    Some municipalities on the Wesdt Coast and a number of private
    organizations have recently extended similar benefits to lesbian and
    gay employees.  But few companies have followed suit and -- at least
    publicly -- no major national firm of the status of Lotus, one of the
    world's leading computer software firms.
    
    [ The above is about 1/4 of the total article. ]

    
From the Boston Globe, 9/12/91:


"Presbyterian Unit Shifts on Women


"Sydney, Australia:  The Presbyterian Church in Australia yesterday revoked
a 1974 decision allowing women to become ministers. It said the decision
was based on the fact that the Bible says women are subservient to men and
in the church's view not suitable as clergy. The Presbyterian National
Assembly meeting in Sydney voted 124 to 60 to prevent women from becoming
ministers in the future. However, the Assembly confirmed the validity of
the ordination of the five existing female ministers in Australia. 'I
believe that the Bible teaches that women should not teach and rule men in
the church,' Rev. Chris Bowser told the Assembly. Quoting from the first
letter of Paul to Timothy, Bowser said: 'I do not permit a woman to teach
or have authority over a man, she must be silent.' The vote is expected to
split the church just as the question of female ordination led to some
members leaving it in 1977." 

Article 646 of misc.activism.progressive:
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From: christic@igc.org
Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive,alt.activism
Subject: THIRD-PARTY HEARINGS IN D.C.
Message-ID: <1991Sep9.210558.8919@pencil.cs.missouri.edu>
Date: 9 Sep 91 21:05:58 GMT
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/* Written  2:07 pm  Sep  9, 1991 by christic in cdp:christic.news */
/* ---------- "THIRD-PARTY HEARINGS IN D.C." ---------- */
-------------------------------------------------------------------
THIRD PARTY HEARINGS IN WASHINGTON ON FRIDAY, SATURDAY

Christic Institute, Sept. 9, 1991

A public hearing and debate in Washington this week will explore
proposals to create a progressive third party and reform the
present two-party system.

The first day of hearings, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Friday, Sept.
13, will be held at Room 2237 of the Rayburn House Office Building
next to the U.S. Capitol. On Saturday, Sept. 14, the hearings will
continue from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the District Building, 13th
Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.

The event is sponsored by the Commission for Responsive Democracy
of the National Organization for Women Foundation. The commission
was created by NOW at its 1989 annual conference to investigate the
formation of a new political party dedicated to equality for women.
Since then, the commission has sought the advice of progressive
organizations and movements concerned with the failure of the
present party structure to secure human rights, economic justice
and protection for the environment. 

The public is invited to the hearings.

In hearings in several cities, the commission has learned that
voters are ``in ferment,'' says NOW President Molly Yard. ``The
voters are fed up with the lack of political leadership in this
country. . . . Citizen groups throughout the nation are organizing,
both by taking over the existing party structure, and by forming
new coalitions, new alliances and new political parties.''

The Sept. 13 public hearing will feature testimony from national
political experts and grassroots activists on a number of issues,
including

* reform in the structure of existing parties.

* development of a feminist party.

* creation of a ``shadow cabinet.''

* public financing of campaigns.

* mandatory limits on terms in office.

* a ban on paid campaign advertising.

Speakers will include Jim Hightower of Texas, U.S. Rep. Bernie
Sanders of Vermont, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton of the District of
Columbia, economist Seymour Melman, Green Party leader Ron Daniels,
Greenpeace Director Peter Bahouth, former Sen. Eugene McCarthy,
Christic Institute Executive Director Sara Nelson, Christic
Institute General Counsel Daniel Sheehan and Nancy Rich, president
of Canada's New Democratic Party.


For more information, please call the NOW Foundation at (202) 331-
0066.

-------------------------------------------------------------------
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Article 720 of misc.activism.progressive:
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From: christic@igc.org
Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive,alt.activism
Subject: COMMISSION VOTES FOR THIRD PARTY
Message-ID: <1991Sep17.143924.20745@pencil.cs.missouri.edu>
Date: 17 Sep 91 14:39:24 GMT
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/* Written  7:41 am  Sep 17, 1991 by christic in cdp:christic.news */
/* ---------- "COMMISSION VOTES FOR THIRD PARTY" ---------- */
-------------------------------------------------------------------
N.O.W. COMMISSION VOTES TO RECOMMEND FORMATION OF NEW PARTY

Commission for Responsive Democracy, a project of the National
Organization for Women Foundation, Inc., Sunday, Sept. 15, 1991

WASHINGTON, D.C.--The N.O.W. Commission for Responsive Democracy
overwhelmingly voted today by a 26 to 4 margin (with 1 abstention)
to recommend that the National Organization for Women provide
leadership with other vital constituencies to launch a new
political party in 1992.

The commission's decision follows a year-long series of public
hearings at which the commissioners heard testimony from more than
500 people on the noncompetitive nature of and corruption in U.S.
politics. The meetings were held in New York City, Atlanta,
Houston, Tampa, Minneapolis, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.

The testimony at the hearings came from a broad base of
constituency groups and individuals. Well represented in every city
were activists in the areas of the environment, human rights, civil
rights, lesbian and gay rights, criminal justice, peace, health
service providers, consumer advocates, elected officials and
academics, as well as feminists both inside and outside of N.O.W.
These individuals and organizations were unanimous in their belief
that major, drastic changes had to be made in the electoral process
immediately.

During the hearings, many suggestions regarding electoral reform
were offered, but it became clear that only limited and inadequate
electoral laws would pass without a declaration of political
independence. In addition, the majority of those attending the
hearings were clearly in favor of the formation of a new political
party.

The Commission for Responsive Democracy was charged by the 1989
N.O.W. national conference to investigate the formation of a new
party dedicated to equality for women and an expanded Bill of
Rights for the 21st Century. The Bill of Rights for the 21st
Century includes, but is not limited to:

1.   The right to freedom from sex discrimination.
2.   The right to freedom from race discrimination.
3.   The right of all women to freedom from government
     interference in abortion, birth control and pregnancy, and the
     right of indigent women to public funds for abortion, birth
     control and pregnancy services.
4.   The right to freedom from discrimination on the basis of 
     sexual orientation.
5.   The right to freedom from discrimination based on religion,
     age, ongoing health condition or a differently abled
     situation.
6.   The right to a decent standard of living, including adequate
     food, housing, health care and education.
7.   The right to clean air, clean water, safe toxic waste disposal
     and environmental protection.
8.   The right to be free from violence, including freedom from the
     threat of nuclear war.

The recommendations of the Commission for Responsive Democracy will
be sent for discussion and approval to the N.O.W. National
Conference in June 1992 in Chicago. The decision of the N.O.W.
Conference, the supreme governing body of N.O.W., will be binding
on the organization.

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Andrew Lang             151251507 CHRISTIC                    telex
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Article 721 of misc.activism.progressive:
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From: christic@igc.org
Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive,alt.activism
Subject: COMMISSION VOTES FOR THIRD PARTY
Message-ID: <1991Sep17.144319.20916@pencil.cs.missouri.edu>
Date: 17 Sep 91 14:43:19 GMT
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/* Written  7:45 am  Sep 17, 1991 by christic in cdp:christic.news */
/* ---------- "COMMISSION VOTES FOR THIRD PARTY" ---------- */
-------------------------------------------------------------------
WORKING GROUP FORMED FOR NEW POLITICAL PARTY

Commission for Responsive Democracy, a project of the National
Organization for Women Foundation, Inc., Sept. 15, 1991

WASHINGTON, D.C.--The N.O.W. Commission for Responsive Democracy,
which today voted to recommend that the National Organization for
Women provide leadership with other vital constituencies to launch
a new political party in 1992, urged, as its final act, the
formation of a working group for the new political party.

In a meeting called to order immediately after the adjournment of
the commission, supporters of the new party formed a working group
to begin the platform, voter registration and recruitment,
outreach, fundraising, candidate search and research tasks
necessary for the creation of the new political party. The working
group chose the following six people as co-conveners:

Dolores Huerta, cofounder of the United Farm Workers of America,
one of the highest ranking women in the U.S. labor movement and
organizer within the Hispanic community, of Bakersfield, Calif.

Patricia Ireland, executive vice president of the National
Organization for Women, organizer of N.O.W.'s Global Feminism
activities, attorney, of Miami, Fla.

Mel King, former Massachusetts state representative, whose campaign
for mayor helped launch the Rainbow Coalition, professor at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, of Boston, Mass.

Sara Nelson, executive director of the Christic Institute,
previously served as coordinator of the Karen Silkwood case and
director of the Greensboro Civil Rights Fund, of Washington, D.C.

Ellie Smeal, president of the Fund for the Feminist Majority and
former three-term president of the National Organization for Women,
internationally known feminist activist, of Falls Church, Va.

Monica Faith Stewart, former member of the Illinois House of
Representatives, graduate of the Kennedy School of Government at
Harvard University, adjunct faculty member of Northeastern Illinois
University, of Chicago, Ill.

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Article 722 of misc.activism.progressive:
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From: christic@igc.org
Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive,alt.activism
Subject: COMMISSION VOTES FOR THIRD PARTY
Message-ID: <1991Sep17.144105.20829@pencil.cs.missouri.edu>
Date: 17 Sep 91 14:41:05 GMT
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/* Written  7:43 am  Sep 17, 1991 by christic in cdp:christic.news */
/* ---------- "COMMISSION VOTES FOR THIRD PARTY" ---------- */
-------------------------------------------------------------------
TEXT OF RESOLUTION RECOMMENDING FORMATION OF NEW POLITICAL PARTY

Commission for Responsive Democracy, a project of the National
Organization for Women Foundation, Inc., Sept. 15, 1991

``The Commission for Responsive Democracy finds that there is a
need for a new force in United States politics to ignite in the
United States the revolution for democracy that is sweeping the
world in order to politically and economically empower all people
of the United States.

``Fueled by the public disgust with the massive unprecedented
corruption, greed and hypocrisy in the Republican and Democratic
parties, the Commission for Responsive Democracy calls for a new
party and recommends to the National Organization for Women that it
provide leadership with other constituencies, grassroots activists
and those fundamentally alienated from the current system in the
establishment of a new independent political party dedicated to
equality, social and economic justice, demilitarization and a
healthy environment.

``This new party will include as part of its basic tenets internal
democracy, candidate adherence to the party's platform and
accountability to membership.''

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Andrew Lang             151251507 CHRISTIC                    telex
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    the last paragraph of an AP report on our [Digital's] quarterly earnings
    announcement is reproduced below in its entirety without permission and
    as it appeared in the NashUa Telegraph last evening:
    
     "Digital will attempt to simulate computer sales later this month by
    announcing a new lkine of VAX computers based on 'open systems' design,
    where equipment from different manufacturers can work together."
    
    
    imagine.
    
    we've been running computer simulations all along ... I think I've hit
    upon something.  we need to stop with the simulations and actually try
    and sell something.
    
      Annie

LESBIAN WEDDING TURNS INTO TEST CASE

By Mark Mayfield
USA Today
October 21, 1991

 	ATLANTA - A lesbian marriage cost Robin Shahar a job with the Georgia 
attorney general's office.
	Now she's suing in a case the American Civil Liberties Union hopes will
become a landmark in homosexual rights.
	State Attorney General Michael Bowers has until Wednesday to answer the
suit filed be Shahar, who wants her job plus unspecified damages.
	"She was punished for a lesbian marriage, conducted in a religious
ceremony,"  says the ACLU's Ruth Harlow.  "One would expect the state attorney
general to be very familiar with constitutional rights."
	Shahar, 28, a May graduate of Emory University law school, and her
partner, Fran Shahar, were married in a Jewish ceremony July 28.  Both adopted
the same last name; it's "seeking God" in Hebrew.
	"They seem deeply committed to each other and to their religion.  That's
what mattered to me," says Sharon Kleinbaum, a Washington, D.C. rabbi who took
it upon herself to marry the couple.
	Robin Shahar was to have begun work as an assistant attorney general
Sept. 23.  Bowers revoked the job offer in July after learning of her marriage
plans.  Georgia law specifically sanctions heterosexual marriages but makes no
mention of homosexual marriages.
	"My office... has but one function... to uphold the law," says Bowers. 
"She came along and said, 'I'm going to engage in conduct which is not
recognized, sanctioned, or condoned by Georgia law.'  It was strictly a legal
question."
	 Key issues in the case: workplace discrimination and separation of
church and state.
	Shahar says her marriage was a religious event, not sanctioned by
Georgia law.
	"We had about a hundred people there, including our parents," says
Shahar.  "I've never purported to have a civil marriage.  I've not put this on
a tax form.  There is nothing in Georgia law the says two women cannot have a
marriage ceremony."		

    I've just heard on the radio this morning that, today, it's officially
    going to become an offense (in the UK) for a man to rape his wife.
    
    Alice T.

>    I've just heard on the radio this morning that, today, it's officially
>    going to become an offense (in the UK) for a man to rape his wife.
    
Only if the bill is passed by the House of Lords....that's what the report
was about, it's being read today...

    I heard that it has been passed and it is now possible for a man to
    rape his wife and be convicted for it. 'Bout bl**dy time to!
    
    
    Jerome.         

I heard yesterday morning that there was a bill was recently passed in 
Pennsylvania limiting a woman's access to abortions. 

In specific, the bill had three points:  it
required that minors tell their parents before an abortion, that
a woman must get her husband's permission and that there be a 24 hour
waiting period.  Apparantly two of these three parts passed (I don't
remember which two), and the right-to-lifers are appealing the 
veto of the third with the hopes that it will reach the newly
right-to-life Supreme Court.  The man interviewed said that they
(the right-to-lifers, of which he was one) were hoping to preferably
overturn Roe v Wade, or at least "chip away at it."

D!

    I heard the same story.  More details:  It was the spousal-consent
    provision that was knocked down and that's being appealed to the
    Supreme Court.  Apparently the judge felt that parental consent and 
    a 24-hour waiting period would not unduly burden a woman seeking an 
    abortion, but that the spousal-consent clause might.
    
    That's all I heard.
    
    --jim

 Neato. We can have the other two parts appealed to the Supreme Court for not
being struck down (by one group), while the one that was struck down is appealed
by another group. how quaint.

    hmmm, looks like a discussion to me (see topic).  "Struck down" and
    "to be appealed."  That makes more sense than "Vetoed" and "to be
    appealed."
    
    ed

    I've mentioned it already, but it apparently wasn't official then.
    
    The House of Lords has thrown out a 250 year old principle that
    there is no such thing as rape within marriage. Britains highest
    court gave its blessing to a wife's right to say no. The decision
    brings the whole of Britain into line with Scotland, where marital
    rape has been a crime since 1989. Lord Keith's ruling referred to
    the 17th century judge Sir Matthew Hale, whose views have formed
    the basis of the law until now.
       Hale's proposition, published in 1736, 60 years after his death,
    held that, by marrying, a wife gives her 'irrevocable consent' to
    sexual intercourse with her husband under all circumstances.
       Lord Keith declared: 'In modern times any reasonable person must
    regard that as quite unacceptable.' He also said : 'One of the most
    important changes is that marriage is in modern times regarded as
    a partnership of equals.'  (here here - JB)
    
    Extracted from todays Daily Mail.
    
    
    What I find incredible is that the views of one man who died *315* 
    years ago in 1676!, until yesterday, could still be regarded as law. 
    Why do things like this take so long to change. At least it's been 
    made law I suppose, and not a moment too soon. Just think of all the
    women who have suffered over the years because of one dead mans views.
    
    
    Jerome.                                    

    "Economic growth under Bush has averaged 0.6 percent a year - the
    lowest rate of any postwar president.  The second-worst record was
    Gerald Ford's, at 1.6 percent.  Even under Jimmy Carter, growth
    averaged a relatively robust 2.9 percent.  And, of course, Carter
    and Ford were both denied reelection.
      Real wages, adjusted for inflation, have declined for three straight
    years.  The decline of male workers, who voted disproportionately
    for Bush in 1988, has been more severe than that of women." -
          from columnist Bob Kuttner

    From an article in the Boston Globe, 10/20/91:
    
    "[District Attorney] Buel said that domestic violence is the leading
    cause of injury for women in America, it is still not taken seriously
    in the legal or medical professions or in the political arena.  There
    are three times as many animal shelters as battered women shelters in
    Massachusetts, she noted."
    
    Sidebar from the same article:
    
    o  One of every two women in America will be in a violent relationship.
    
    o  Battering is a more common injury for women than automobile
       accidents, muggings and stranger rapes combined.
    
    o  Almost one-third of all emergency room visits by women are related
       to domestic violence.
    
    o  Only 5 percent of female victims of domestic violence are described
       as such in medical records.
    
    o  About 37 percent of women are physically abused during pregnancy;
       abuse of pregnant women is a leading cause of birth defects and
       infant mortality.
    
    For help, call 1-800-333-SAFE.
    
    
    -Tracy
    

From the Boston Globe, 10/23/91:


Sexual Misconduct Seen as Serious Problem in Religion
-----------------------------------------------------

"Sexual abuse and sexual misconduct are among the most farreaching problems 
facing organized religion.

"Such abuse or misconduct has led senior church officials and parish 
leaders to resign, cost congregations or dioceses enormous sums in 
liability judgments and undermined confidence in religious leadership.

"The accused include some of religion's most distinguished leaders: 
Lutheran Bishop Lowell Mays and Rev. James Armstrong, former president of 
the National Council of Churches, both resigned because of extramarital 
affairs; Rev. Bruce Ritter, a Franciscan priest, left the shelter he 
founded for street children in New York because of abuse charges; 
Archbishop Alphonsus Penney of the Catholic Archdiocese of St. John's, 
Newfoundland, resigned 15 months ago because of long-term sexual abuse of 
children at institutions under his jurisdiction.

"Some of the most publicized problems have come in Catholic dioceses in 
cases where parents were exasperated by church officials who did not remove 
priests accused of sexually abusing children from positions involving 
contact with young people.

"But cases have also occurred in a variety of other religious bodies, and 
most major religious groups have recently adopted personnel policies 
intended to force supervisors to take action and not attempt to transfer 
offenders to another post while encouraging victims to remain silent.

"Yet some critics believe those policies are late and ineffective. 'It 
appears the church is more committed to protect the perpetrators and keep 
abuse secret,' Rev. Marie Fortune, author of a 1989 book on sexual abuse 
among the clergy and director of the Center for the Prevention of Sexual 
and Domestic Violence in Seattle, told a women's meeting at the Episcopal 
General Convention last July in Phoenix.

"A 1990 study by the Park Ridge Center for the Study of Health, Faith and 
Ethics in Chicago found 10 percent of ministers said they had had an affair 
with a parishioner and about 25 percent admitted some sexual conduct with a 
parishioner.

"A 1990 book published by Fortress Press, 'Ministry and Sexuality,' by Rev. 
G. Lloyd Redinger, asserted that 10 percent of the nations' clergy had 
engaged in sexual misconduct. In a 1990 poll, about 42 percent of women 
ministers in the United Methodist Church reported sexual harassment by 
other pastors or colleagues."