Menstuff® makes public letters of inquiry and conceren that haven't received a response as of September 1, 2014.
TV Violence
National
Organization for Women
Team Mickey
Promotes Violence at the Disneyland
Hotel
Outrages on
TV
Leeza
National Organization for Women
July 8, 1996
Ms Patricia Ireland
National Organization for Women
1000 16th St NW #700
Washington, DC 20036
Dear Ms Ireland:
I want to personally offer my apology for the enclosed Editor's Note I reported in the last issue of Menstuff, The National Men's Resource. This is the first time that I know of in our 12 years of publication where we picked up information from another men's publications that was erroneous. I have taken the following steps:
1. Offered my apology to the National office of the National
Organization for Women and the South Carolina Chapter (see the
attached letter).
2. Sent the attached green card to all Menstuff
subscribers.
3. Marked out the editorial in copies that go to new subscribers, so
that the section is unreadable.
4. Will print a retraction in the next issue of Menstuff, due
out September 1, 1996. (Which was done.)
Hoping to prevent mis-information in the future, this does offer an opportunity for us to get up-to-date on N.O.W.'s position and thinking on several issues of interest to our readers. Please feel free to direct these inquiries to the appropriate people for response.
Where does the organization stand regarding:
A. Lorena Bobbit and Sue Smith's violent actions.
B. Joint Physical Custody.
C. Mediation of custody arrangements.
D. Offering help for women who are the perpetrators of violence:
including spousal abuse (het or gay) and child abuse - neglect,
sexual, physical, emotional, and/or spiritual.
E: Women's part of the responsibility in the genital mutilation of
their male children through circumcision and, if religious, ritual
abuse.
F. Where does your Pornography Task Force stand on the National
Organization for Men Against Sexism's Pornography Task Group's
position on Pornography, which is basically the position of John
Stoltenburg with support of Phyllis Frank and Bob Brennan. What's
your organization's current definition of what constitutes
pornography.
G. The position that all sports programs through high school should
be open to anyone who wants to participate, regardless of sex.
H. That Statutory Rape includes any adult having intercourse with any
child under the legal age set by the state involved (usually 17 or
18), regardless of the sex of the adult or child. And that the
punishment shall be levied according to the severity of the crime,
not the sex of the parties involved.
I. That Men's Studies courses should be made available to all
students to increase the understanding of major issues between the
sexes and of special concern to men - testicular cancer, healthy ways
of masculinity, responsible dating, etc. (Work from responsibility
versus blaming which produces guilt and shame - not ways to illicit
positive change.)
If you would direct me to those who would be best suited to respond to these and future requests for clarification, it would be most appreciated.
Yours in continued growth, Gordon Clay
Team Mickey Promotes Violence at the
Disneyland Hotel
Dear Mr. Eisner:
This is regarding your Team Mickey retail establishment in the Disneyland Hotel. In a retail establishment directed to children, I would expect products that are fun and, if they carry a message, that it is a healthy one.
Most of the product lines fit the Disney image. The Disney characters. The team sportswear. However, most of your other clothing was supplied with the "No Fear" label and carried less than healthy messages. Just the "No Fear" message to adolescent boys encourages them to be tough, do stupid things, not acknowledge true fear and go "over the edge". If you know the statistics, adolescent boys participate in this dangerous area too much as it is without Disney encouraging them.
Besides the shirts, pants and hats that were encouraging "No Fear", there were t-shirt messages as follows:
Are these truly the kinds of messages the Disney Corporation wants to portray? As the visionairies of the world for children, I would hope not. We will be putting this message on our website and will up-date it when we hear your response and proposed action steps to be taken, if any.
Yours in continued growth, Gordon Clay
Mr. Richard Bey
ATTN: 6th Floor
445 Park Ave
New York, NY 10022
Dear Richard:
NEW SHOW IDEA: Find a group of men who are ready to dump their lovers and bring the women on the show thinking this is a show about healing the relationship. Then, use nationwide television to totally abuse the women by having the men tell them to "get out". You could get some extra mileage by having men accuse them of all kinds of things, from being golddiggers to being unfaithful (which represents about 40% of married women today).
Your February 23 show was a circus side show and just another example of how men like yourself are willing to damage other men for money (or in your case ratings which equal money).
The local promo for this show said, "They knew they had problems but they didn't think they were going to get dumped". I would bet, unless it was a set-up like professional wrestling, that these men thought they were coming on national TV to work on their relationship. Then you find three women who really want to hurt their former lover's as much as possible. Then you, the audience and their lover tell them on network television to "get out". And, if that's not enough, you add the shame of setting them up for a replacement date with a tranvestite and the Rose family.
No wonder it's hard to encourage men to trust other men when we have people like you around. You might think it's innocent fun. It's not. It's maliciousness in its highest form.
Finally, I really don't want you to develop the show concept I noted at the top. Just because some women and men want to find ways to hurt each other, I'm not interested in that kind of freak show thinking and believe we need to create things that really do heal relationships and don't use these kinds of divisive techniques to emotional damage the other sex. I am interested to know if you have any consciousness or integrity at all and would welcome a reply, since you said on television that you read every letter.
Yours in continued growth, Gordon Clay
1. The U.S. is a sex-negative culture.
2. Healthy sex education in the home is still very seldom practiced.
3. As a culture, we try to keep our "girls" "little girls" as long as possible, and long after their bodies have become that of a woman.
4. Yet, in many cultures around the world, Africa and India and especially Roman Catholic countries - Equador and Peru, young girls are acknowledged as full women upon their first menses and start developing the skills to start creating and raising a family. Our tour guide in Equador last year, told us that the average marriage, especially among the poor, the woman is 13 and the man is 21. The family wants to insure their daughter can be taken care of financially, and the point is that the girl is a woman.
Something to question and think about. Other cultures recognize the natural development process and honor it. We ignore it, don't develop our children, male or female, to understand what their bodies are doing and how developed they are. Instead, in our own discomfort with talking about sex, we don't provide information that our children need - to understand that they are physically women and men and we need to have them understand that that makes them adults and, as adults, they need to learn responsible action.
Actually, under the recovery communities definitions of sexual abuse, one area of sexual abuse is not providing appropriate information about sex or providing inappropriate information. No wonder we have so many teen pregnancies, many with men in their early twenties. Coincidence with the other countries or a natural response to natural happenings in their bodies. In those countries, they marry and start developing families. In ours, we shame the young women and imprison the young men for doing what comes naturally.
I respect you and your show. I find that you and Oprah seldom go for the sensational, like some other talkshow hosts we both know. I know this would be a difficult way to look at this subject, but it may be by far the healthiest way to look at it.
I raised a daughter since she was 8. (She's now 32 and happily married.) We co-facilitated fathers and teenage daughters rites of passage. I've work in men's issues since 1976. We have a webpage on hundreds of men's issues (www.menstuff.org). I've done a workshop for women only and men only for 13 years called Healing the Father Wound® where much of this confusion growing up surfaces and, as adults, we have to deal with it. What I want you to know is that I'm not promoting statutory rape. And, I am interested in having our culture take responsibility for how we choose to control our children and keep them from doing what comes naturally. It is the religious leaders, law makers, communities and individuals that set up what's moral. But that is a mind concept. The same religious communities, law makers and individuals in other countries around the world, look at this subject from a physiological perspective. (In fact, I saw an article in, I believe, in Attitude from England, about the age to marry and I think the age was 14 in France, and some countries didn't even have an age limit. If nothing else, it would really be an interesting show.
While I don't expect a response, I would be interested in one. I would also like to know when the show will be scheduled to air.
Yours in continued growth, Gordon Clay
|
|
