Dole's Gender Trap
CRITTENDEN, DANIELLE
Dole's Gender Trap by Danielle Crittenden Bob Dole has, he says, a plan to end the gender gap-but in his effort to woo the female public, he is behaving like a tired rou? whose pick-up lines keep...
...Did I mention my war record...
...Instead of enacting effective measures for preventing and punishing violent crime," said Anita K. Blair of the Independent Women's Forum in her testimony before the committee, "it creates an expensive and unnecessary expansion of federal bureaucracy...
...They claimed "three to four million women a year are physically abused" and that "more than one third [of wives] are battered repeatedly every year...
...But maybe the female public is just less forgiving than the male of Dole's one great failing, the failing that his support for the Violence Against Women's Act underscores: his lack of conviction and vision...
...Department of Justice, the Committee trusted the advocacy members...
...The advocates asserted that women were more likely to be injured by violence than "automobile accidents, muggings, and cancer deaths combined...
...Danielle Crittenden is editor of the Women's Quarterly, published by the Independent Women's Forum...
...For the Violence Against Women's Act has done nothing to stop violence against women-while it has done everything to line the coffers of feminist organizations whose bogus statistics and hysterical testimony to Congress brought about the act in the first place...
...As it is, there aren't even a few bucks put aside for karate classes...
...Whom is he trying to seduce...
...The best use of taxpayers' dollars . . . would be to isolate and incarcerate the offenders [and impose] longer mandatory sentences and the abolition of parole...
...There was no source for this statistic, as Sommers pointed out, but a reporter with the Newhouse News Service traced it to domestic-violence activists, who admitted it was just a guess on their part...
...After all, the only thing a woman can't stand more than a man who won't ask for directions when he's lost is a man who asks for directions all the time...
...His boast last week to a group of Republican women that he "led the Senate" in funding the $1.6 billion Violence Against Women Act was the political equivalent of taking off his tie and replacing it with a gold chain...
...The fact that he might remind women of their fathers is, I think, an advantage-among Republican women, anyway...
...As Christina Hoff Sommers wrote in a memo to members of Congress before the bill was passed last summer, "The preponderance of testimony came from feminist researchers and activists who were invited to Washington to speak before the [House appropriations] committee...
...Congress also dismissed other federal research that demonstrated that women are dramatically more likely to be assaulted by strangers than by their husbands (husbands account for only 2 percent of criminal attacks against women...
...The recognized experts on domestic violence and rape were not invited...
...Hey, I'm great with kids...
...Dole's declaration of support for the Violence Against Women Act is unnerving not simply because it reveals how unabashedly proud he is to endorse Democratic pork, but because it shows again how little he understands the concerns of his constituency-male and female...
...Congress ignored the most recent data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, which showed that the number of total sexual assaults against women had in fact fallen by as much as 20 percent by 1995, from a high of 485,000 in 1993...
...But the inflated assertions paid off for the groups that made them-from the Battered Women's Justice Project to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence...
...Compared to his opponent, he is manly, decent, honorable, a respectful and faithful husband, and a war hero...
...On the surface, it is astonishing that this election is not a cakewalk for Dole, especially among women voters...
...Moreover, in almost every instance where there was a clear choice in accepting inflated figures promoted by activists or accepting the far more moderate figures reported by government agencies, such as the U.S...
...whose pick-up lines keep falling flat...
...I've got a lot of experience" (wink, wink...
...Among the booty distributed after the act's passage was $205 million for "rape prevention education," to be funneled through the Department of Health and Human Services (read: more millions for advocacy groups...
Vol. 1 • May 1996 • No. 35
