Friday, November 3, 2000
The University Daily Kansan
Section A · Page 5
Letters to the editor
Voters have other options
I was a bit horrified to read Karen Boyd's recent article, "Vote 'none of the above' in race for the presidency."
Ms. Boyd briefly lists four candidates running for office, and then bemoans her fate at having such a poor selection to choose from. These are the only people running for president! For those voters who can't find anything they like about Bush, Gore, Nader or Buchanan, there are plenty more to choose from. The other main candidates are Harry Browne (Libertarian Party), John Hagelin (Natural Law Party), David McKeynolds (Socialist Party) and Howard Phillips (Constitution Party). A brief Internet search will yield dozens of sites that list and analyze the views of these candidate
Of course, there is no way we can know if Ms. Boyd would consider any of these candidates worthy of being president. She hasn't really said what it is that makes a good president, except to say that "rich boys" are definitely out. Well, middle-class presidential candidates are pretty hard to come by these days; even Ralph Nader is a multi millionaire. If you're going to vote, you'll have to vote on the issues, not on the candidate's economic status.
Being a good American doesn't just mean watching the presidential debates between Republicans and Democrats and talking to the Green Party tables on campus. If you are disenchanted with the candidates you see, look beyond the mainstream choices offered to us. Voting "none of the above" out of disgust is the only sure way to throw away your vote.
Ben Mohr Colorado Springs senior
Med Center employee clarifies statements in Thursday article
Some clarification and corrections are due regarding yesterday's article about the clinics at the Med Center. If I said that the resident physicians had been kept in the dark about the proposed move, I misspoke. The residency faculty and apparently the medical school's administration as well had been kept in the dark about this plan. In fact, many of the resident physicians had heard of the proposal within hours of the time their faculty had learned of it.
And while this came up at a potentially difficult time for recruiting new residents, there has been no consideration of keeping this information from those applicants. Our challenge in communication to our staff and students is that something is happening about which we have been offered remarkably little opportunity to participate in or reliable information to base our actions upon. I suspect that the disclosure of this poorly planned and executed act by hospital administration may in the long run benefit the primary care residencies by focusing attention on their importance and value to the future health of the people of Kansas. University administration seems to be responding appropriately, and a number of state legislators have also taken up the cause.
As established by the state legislature, there is a clear division of responsibility and accountability between the medical school and the hospital. The past week's remarkable set of events seemed to grow out at least some measure of misunderstanding and miscommunication of missions.
While it remains unclear about when and where the clinics will relocate, it appears that the hospital is, this week anyway, now working with the school to find appropriate space for continued primary care operations somewhere on the campus of the medical center. Handled intelligently, such a move could certainly benefit the provision of primary health care education at the Medical Center.
Gary E. Bochman
assistant professor of family medicine Kansas University Medical Center
Kline's campaign too invasive
Phill Kline has successfully taken political advertising to a new low. Not content to merely mudsling in radio and TV ads, he now has apparently sunk to combining the annoyances of telemarketing and political advertisements. I've received two telephone calls in the last two days, both being "important messages about Dennis Moore." The ensuing telephone calls have been nothing but a rehash of Mr. Kline's mudslinging ads. I am offended that a person running for office would utilize this method of "advertising." It's one thing to have to hear these messages on TV or radio; it's quite another to force the electorate to hear them via their telephone.
Mr. Kline, your complete disregard for my privacy has allowed this former undecided voter to decide which candidate will get my vote.
Jason Fondrick
Lawrence graduate student
Feminism misguided in Womyn Take Back the Night
Is there any spectacle in America more bizarre than that of ideologically crazed feminists rampaging down a street screaming over their right to kill unborn children? Well, there is one that is close, the spectacle of Take Back the Night.
While watching from my upstairs window on Massachusetts Street, the procession below, while nowhere as malignant, still looked a little too much like the midnight torch-lit parades of the early Nazis, and there are some similarities that concern me.
First, the demonization of other groups — in the case of the Nazi, the Jews in this case, the American male. In place of the pagan symbol of the Swastika, the gender feminist symbol is three women holding up the moon, evoking latter-day earth goddess roaming through the American campus. In fact, women centers on campus do run "moon groups" dedicated to the pagan nature goddesses and teaching that prehistoric Europe was a peaceful, egalitarian, matriarchal society that worshiped the goddesses, until the wicked patriarchy forced them out. Said the famous anthropologist, Margaret Mead, of this, "claims made about societies run by women are nonsense; we have no reason to believe they ever existed."
For 10 years, Take Back the Night has been the largest annual demonstration on the American campus, based on the wildly exaggerated claim by Gloria Steinem in Ms. magazine in 1985 that one out of four female students gets raped. While I don't have the latest figures, between 1983 and 1992, only two rapes were reported to the Princeton campus security, and at Berkeley, with 14,000 female students, only two were reported in 1990.
The problem comes from the interpretation by the gender feminists of rape. In a study by Neil Gilbert, professor of social science at Berkeley, he found that in the Ms. study, 73 percent of the women categorized as rape victims had not, in fact, denied their experience as such. That interpretation came from Mary Koss, the feminist psychologist who conducted the study. These were not self-proclaimed victims. They were victims according to someone else. Gilbert also found that 42 percent of the students it identified as rape victims later had sex with the same men who had supposedly raped them.
Someone is "finding" the rape crisis and finding it for a purpose — to promote the ideological agenda of the feminist movement, conjured up to justify a broader critique of society with rape as the primary proof of male aggression against women.
So, instead of celebrating women's strength once a year, feminist leaders in Take Back the Night emphasize women's vulnerability, with everyone glowing in their status as victims, the image of helplessness and passivity, a temporary hypocritical charge to strengthen the gender feminists charge of patriarchal oppression (which, of course, is nonsense.)
Gender feminists set up female students for the
purpose of pursuing their real agenda, the same values of the '60sthat betrayed the freedom of the South Vietnamese, anti-middle class, antidemocratic, anti-religious, anti-patriotic, anti-Western and anti-intellectual.
Now, if there is to be a response to this article from a feminist, it is guaranteed to begin, "I am enraged." Feminists are perpetually constipated with "outrage." The movement keeps itself alive by a steady infusion of rage — not to mention falsehoods, irrationality and self pity, all substitutes for accomplishment.
And the most rabid fundamentalist has nothing on a gender feminist in full-blown indignation in response to criticism. I suggest what Harry Truman used to say: "If you can't take the kitchen, at least stay out of the heat."
KU Chapter of Sons and Daughters of Vietnam Veterans
Local attitude toward sexual assault undeniably despicable
In regard to this whole mess of the football players who "allegedly" sexually and physically assaulted the female soccer player, I have been angry, disgusted, saddened and now I am frankly outraged.
Who are all these wolves in sheep's clothing who flee outrage at the "mockery of the justice system?" These are the same people that immediately turn around and write things like "To the soccer player: I think you made an error in judgment but ..." Why do you feel that the soccer player made an error in judgment? Because she didn't immediately report the assault or because she reported it to people in the Athletics Department first (people she probably trusted to treat her with the same respect and concern they would supposedly treat any other athlete who had concerns about fellow athletes)? Do any of you people who insist on blaming this girl, the victim, I might add, realize that while you are outraged at the state of justice in our society, you are helping to perpetuate the very same rape culture and rape myths that make victims reluctant to report their assaults and/or prosecute them?
Quite obviously, those people who insist on a victim-blaming approach toward what amounts to violent sex crimes have never been raped, sexually assaulted or battered. There is a culture of shame and stigma that often attaches itself more to the rape victim than to the rapists themselves.
Questions abound from law enforcement and lawyers such as "How much did you have to drink?" or, "Why were you alone with this person?" or "What were you wearing?" that force the victims of such crimes into feelings of guilt and depression. "Maybe I could have fought harder" or "I should not have worn that skirt" are the sort of things victims are made to think in this society after being violently attacked because rape and sexual assault couldn't possibly be the fault of the perpetrators of such crimes, right?
Wrong. No matter what a woman (or any person, for that matter) does, what she wears, or how she does or does not report the crime committed against her, she is still not at fault. No means no, and if you are unable to say no, then you are unable to yes, and that means no. Obviously there are many people on campus and in the community who have no idea what is like to be too scared, ashamed or intimidated to speak up. Just because it took the soccer player some time to find her voice does not mean that she doesn't deserve to have one.
Finally, I would like to say shame on the UDK for something serious and real. Shame on you for publishing comments and stories that have perpetuated rape culture and myths and aided in the perpetration of violence against women in the media and the revictimization of victims. I hope to see more sensitivity in the future toward a population we rarely acknowledge with empathy in the U.S.: victims of sex crimes.
Crispian L. Paul Wichita senior
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