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Path: utzoo!watmath!watdcsu!dmcanzi
From: dmcanzi@watdcsu.UUCP (David Canzi)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: San Quentin strip searches -- a new twist
Message-ID: <951@watdcsu.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 12-Feb-85 18:44:26 EST
Article-I.D.: watdcsu.951
Posted: Tue Feb 12 18:44:26 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 13-Feb-85 02:35:37 EST
References: <3365@alice.UUCP> <2295@randvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: dmcanzi@watdcsu.UUCP (David Canzi)
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 53
Summary: 

In article <2295@randvax.UUCP> edhall@randvax.UUCP (Ed Hall) writes:
>However, I'm sort of curious just what kind of point the Playboy article
>was trying to make.  Sounds like they were making the tired claim ``now
>that women have the same rights [sic] as men, they should have the same
>liabilities as well''.  They probably trotted out a list of alimony and
>custody-dispute horror stories later on in the article to show how much
>men are discriminated against.  Maybe they even brought out some cases
>of how new laws make it difficult for men to defend themselves against
>false rape accusations.

I'll satisfy your curiosity with some excerpts:
	"Politics is largely a matter of what gets noticed.  Its
	practitioners exert themselves to make us place certain
	considerations in the foreground and others in the background. 
	That is what lobbyists and political action committees are for....
Several paragraphs later:
		...Whatever it once may have been in theory, the women's
	movement today is nothing more or less than a lobby, single-
	mindedly promoting the interests of one group at the expense of
	another, without regard to logic, principle, or justice.

In support of this claim, he states that NOW has opposed efforts to make
child custody settlements fairer,  and that feminist groups have demanded
that the presumption of innocence be denied to accused rapists.  If these
two accusations are true, they are enough to justify taking a good hard
look at the women's movement.  If true, the women's movement (or at least 
some representatives of the movement) is clearly guilty of supporting and
encouraging injustices, when those injustices happen to be favourable to
women.  Unforgivable.

Don't belittle the withholding of the presumption of innocence in
rape cases.  I live alone, and work alone, at odd hours.  For 20 hours
of each day nobody actually knows where I am.  If some woman gets raped
in Waterloo Park and I have the bad luck to resemble the rapist, I could
be in deep shit.  Are you always someplace where somebody else can see you?

>Of course, there may well be a drop or two of truth in the charges these
>``men's rights'' folks make.  Just like there is an ocean of truth
>behind the charges of those claiming that women are still discriminated
>against.

No amount of injustice against women can justify any injustice against
men.  In fact, as a general principle, no amount of injustice against
"x" can justify any injustice against "y".

Most of the rest of your article is pretty irrelevant, given that you
were responding to what you thought the article said, rather that finding
out what it said.  You would have had to *buy* a copy of Playboy to
do that.  Ooh, iccch.  Politically incorrect!
-- 
	David Canzi

"But lo! men have become the tools of their tools." -- Henry David Thoreau