The History of 'APRONS'

 

The History of 'APRONS'

(You will love the story)

I don't think most kids today know what an apron is. The principle use of Mom's or Grandma's apron was to protect the dress underneath because she only had a few. It was also because it was easier to wash aprons than dresses and aprons used less material. But along with that, it served as a potholder for removing hot pans from the oven.

It was wonderful for drying children's tears, and on occasion was even used for cleaning out dirty ears.

From the chicken coop, the apron was used for carrying eggs, fussy chicks, and sometimes half-hatched eggs to be finished in the warming oven.

When company came, those aprons were ideal hiding places for shy kids..

And when the weather was cold, she wrapped it around her arms.

Those big old aprons wiped many a perspiring brow, bent over the hot wood stove.

Chips and kindling wood were brought into the kitchen in that apron.

From the garden, it carried all sorts of vegetables. After the peas had been shelled, it carried out the hulls.

In the fall, the apron was used to bring in apples that had fallen from the trees.

When unexpected company drove up the road, it was surprising how much furniture that old apron could dust in a matter of seconds.

When dinner was ready, she walked out onto the porch, waved her apron, and the men folk knew it was time to come in from the fields to dinner.

It will be a long time before someone invents something that will replace that 'old-time apron' that served so many purposes.

Send this to those who would know (and love) the story about aprons.

REMEMBER:

Mom's and Grandma's used to set hot baked apple pies on the window sill to cool. Her granddaughters set theirs on the window sill to thaw.

They would go crazy now trying to figure out how many germs were on that apron.

I don't think I ever caught anything from an apron - but love

 

Countries With No Property Tax Where Foreigners Can Own Real Estate

by Sovereign Man

Thursday, Oct 13, 2022 - 10:11

by Joe Jarvis via Sovereign Man

The principle that your home is your castle is enshrined in Western culture.

It signals that an individual has monarch-like rights to his or her own private property.

But stop paying property tax and you’ll soon feel more like a serf on the lord’s land.

And when they come to take your home, it becomes apparent that the government truly owns your land.

You are just a renter, paying property taxes of 2% or more in some locations on the property’s value. Every single year.

That adds up, especially as home values have skyrocketed over the past couple of years.

In the United States, local governments set property tax rates. But few towns opt to forgo property taxes altogether.

In the US, Alaska offers the best chance to find a community with no property taxes.

The Alaska Department of Commerce says that only 24 of 165 municipalities in Alaska charge property taxes.

In addition, “Alaska exempts from property taxes the first $150,000 of assessed value for all senior citizens (65 years of age and over) and disabled veterans.”

But luckily, if Alaska is too cold and remote for you, the world is bigger than the United States.

And if you are willing to consider purchasing property abroad, there are a number of countries which levy no property tax at all.

Turks and Caicos is one place where you will owe no property taxes. And there are no restrictions on foreigners purchasing real estate.

This Caribbean archipelago is a British Overseas Territory which also levies no income or capital gains tax.

But there will be a sizable transfer tax at the time of purchase in Turks and Caicos, ranging between 6.5% and 10% of the property’s value, depending on the property’s location and purchase price. But at least you have to pay it only once.

Plus the purchase of a home can help you qualify for residency. Depending on the location, you will have to buy a property costing between $250,000 and $500,000 to obtain temporary residency, or between $300,000 and $1 million to skip right to permanent residency.

The Cayman Islands is another Caribbean destination where foreigners can buy real estate, and pay no property taxes.

And investing at least $600,000 into the local economy, with half required to go to real estate, is one way to gain temporary residency in the Cayman Islands. But you’ll also need to deposit nearly half a million dollars into a local bank account, and keep it there for the duration of your residency.

There are cheaper ways to obtain residency, such as the two year Global Citizens Concierge Program geared towards digital nomads. Still, they only accept applications from those with six figure salaries.

The plus side is that the Cayman Islands also levies no income taxes.

Dominica, on the other hand, offers Citizenship by Investment.

That means you can purchase full citizenship and a passport from this Caribbean island nation by buying a property worth at least $200,000 — about a third of the price of residency in the Cayman Islands.

And once you purchase your Dominican property, you will owe no property taxes.

Moving outside of the Caribbean…

Malta, an island nation in the Mediterranean which is part of the European Union, also does not levy property taxes, and allows foreigners to own property.

It does, however, usually charge a one time 8% tax on the total value of property transfers — essentially a real estate sales tax.

Malta is home to a Citizenship by Investment program which requires a real estate investment of at least €700,000 (plus a €600,000 donation to the National Development and Social Fund, and other fees).

However, this program is in legal jeopardy as the European Union tries to halt it.

But buying a €370,000 property could qualify you for permanent residency under the island’s Golden Visa program.

Monaco is another tiny European country which does not charge property taxes, or income taxes.

To become a resident through its Golden Visa program, you must deposit €500,000 in a local bank account and keeping the money there for as long as you want to remain a resident.

And the high price tag doesn’t stop there.

Because of its small size — about three miles long, and half a mile wide —real estate prices can be quite extreme.

You’ll be hard-pressed to buy a two bedroom apartment for less than half a million euros. I found one single parking spot listed for a sale price of €375,000.

The Republic of Georgia is a small country on the Black Sea which identifies as European.

Here, foreigners can buy homes with no yearly property taxes.

Furthermore, Georgia is welcoming to digital nomads and remote workers, who can easily gain residency, and in many cases, pay only a 1% tax on their income.

The United Arab Emirates has no property taxes, or income taxes, and it allows foreigners to own land.

Dubai, one of the emirates, is especially appealing because of its luxury lifestyle and numerous special economic zones tailored to various industries.

Dubai offers a remote worker visa which can be renewed annually, or you could go for a three year investor’s visa by forming and capitalizing a company in Dubai.

These are not the only countries without property taxes.

Fiji is another option, if you are looking for an extremely remote tiny island in the Pacific.

Several Middle Eastern countries, such as Saudi Arabia and Oman also levy no property taxes. But the lifestyle and human rights records may leave something to be desired…

Sri Lanka may have been a decent choice to acquire a home free of property tax, before the country began experiencing regulation-induced food shortages and civil unrest.

But if it is important to you to own a property outright, with no recurring yearly “rent” owed to the government, you have plenty of options.

That doesn’t mean you can get everything you ever wanted in one perfect location. Sometimes you have to compromise.

If you want to explore other criteria for which country is best for you, like cost of living, the strength of its passport, crime, climate, and residency options, check out our Global Explorer map here.

 

The UN's Diabolical Plan to Destroy the World Economy

by Rebel Capitalist

Wednesday, Oct 12, 2022 - 16:00

Since its founding in 1945, the United Nations has been a pillar of oligarchical collectivism. 

Think of any zany, big government proposal that you see the political class yammer on about….

Banning Meat 

Carbon Taxes

Gun Control

Global Warming 

Modern Monetary Theory
Universal Basic Income 

Etc.

All of that stuff generally comes from globalist bodies such as the UN.

The UN is the enemy of people who believe in common sense economics and national sovereignty. In the latter case, the UN aims to create a one-world government structure. Under such a system, you can kiss federalism, individual rights, free markets, and property rights goodbye. 

Instead, one can expect to be governed by a “council of elders” or some technocratic class that believes it knows better than you on how to organize society. These people think you and other rebel capitalists are peasants who are incapable of making rational decisions. 

The elitism of these people is truly off the charts. 

Moreover, the UN is beyond useless when it comes to promoting peace. One of the ostensive reasons behind the UN’s creation is how it would bring peace to global affairs. 

When we look at the UN’s track record — from the Korean War all the way to the present Russo-Ukrainian conflict — it has been dismal when it comes to preventing unnecessary conflicts.  

Overall, the UN is the enemy of all people who value freedom and peace across the globe. 

Getting the United States out of this entity will be one of the main steps towards restoring freedom in our land. However, that’s a major work in progress. 

Before we embark on this quest, make sure to check out George Gammon’s recent video on the UN’s latest diabolic scheme to reduce our living standards.

- Team Rebel Capitalist

Colorado: 30,000 noncitizens got vote registration mailer

By JAMES ANDERSONOctober 10, 2022

FILE - Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold speaks during a committee meeting in Baton Rouge, La., July 8, 2022. Colorado's secretary of state's office says it mistakenly sent postcards to about 30,000 non-U.S. citizens encouraging them to register to vote. It blames the error on a database glitch and insists anyone who is not a citizen and tries to register will not be able to. (AP Photo/Matthew Hinton, File)

DENVER (AP) — Colorado’s secretary of state office says it mistakenly sent postcards to about 30,000 noncitizens encouraging them to register to vote, blaming the error on a database glitch related to the state’s list of residents with driver’s licenses.

The office of Democratic Secretary of State Jena Griswold insisted none of the noncitizens will be allowed to register to vote if they try.

The news comes at a time of widespread skepticism — often unfounded — of voting integrity following the 2020 presidential election and as Griswold, who has touted her role as a national advocate for secure elections, seeks reelection in the November midterms.

Colorado’s Republican Party chair, Kristi Burton Brown, condemned Griswold for the error, saying in a Monday statement that “Jena Griswold continues to make easily avoidable errors just before ballots go out” by mail on Oct. 17.

Griswold faces Republican Pam Anderson, a former suburban Denver clerk and head of the state’s county clerks association, who is a staunch advocate of Colorado’s all-mail voting system.

Griswold’s office said in a statement that the postcards were mailed Sept. 27. The error happened after department employees compared a list of names of 102,000 people provided by the Electronic Registration Information Center, a bipartisan, multistate organization devoted to voter registration, to a database of Colorado residents issued driver’s licenses.

That Department of Revenue driver’s license list includes residents issued special licenses for people who are not U.S. citizens. But it didn’t include formatting information that normally would have allowed the Department of State to eliminate those names before the mailers went out, Griswold’s office said Monday.

The incident is under investigation, it said. Colorado Public Radio News first reported the error.

Colorado is among at least 18 states, along with the District of Columbia, that issue driver’s licenses to non-U.S. citizens, according to the National Council on State Legislatures. Colorado also automatically registers eligible voters when they obtain their driver’s license from the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Griswold’s office said it was unaware that anyone who received the postcards in error had tried to register.

It is sending notices to the roughly 30,000 people who aren’t citizens but who mistakenly received the postcards. And it is applying several efforts to prevent or reject anyone not eligible to vote from registering, including comparing Social Security Numbers required for each application, on a daily basis. County clerks also will refer suspect cases to local district attorneys for review.

Sean Morales-Doyle, director of the Voting Rights Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, said the fact that the mistake was caught shows the system is working.

“It should show, first of all, that mistakes can happen, but secondly that there are checks in place to make sure mistakes don’t result in disaster,” Morales-Doyle said. “It’s not good this happened. It appears to be a case of human error and a database error and not some conspiracy, which I think some critics would seize on.”

Morales-Doyle said there have been very few incidents of noncitizens attempting to register in the U.S. because the consequences are so severe — up to and including deportation.

The Electronic Registration Information Center, known as ERIC, is a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving U.S. voter rolls and encouraging registrations. Some 33 states and the District of Colombia belong to the group. Under its contract with ERIC, Colorado sends a mailing to eligible residents encouraging them to register each election cycle.

The Colorado postcards, in English and Spanish, specify that residents must be U.S. citizens and at least 18 years old to register. They tell recipients how to register but are not a registration form.

What true love is:

 

What true love is:

"My parents were married for 55 years. One morning, my mom was going downstairs to make dad breakfast, she had a heart attack and fell. My father picked her up as best he could and almost dragged her into the truck. At full speed, without respecting traffic lights, he drove her to the hospital.

When he arrived, unfortunately she was no longer with us.

During the funeral, my father did not speak; his gaze was lost. He hardly cried.

That night, his children joined him. In an atmosphere of pain and nostalgia, we remembered beautiful anecdotes and he asked my brother, a theologian, to tell him where Mom would be at that moment. My brother began to talk about life after death, and guesses as to how and where she would be.

My father listened carefully. Suddenly he asked us to take him to the cemetery.

"Dad!" we replied, "it's 11 at night, we can't go to the cemetery right now!"

He raised his voice, and with a glazed look he said:

"Don't argue with me, please don't argue with the man who just lost his wife of 55 years."

There was a moment of respectful silence, we didn't argue anymore. We went to the cemetery, and we asked the night watchman for permission. With a flashlight, we reached the tomb. My father caressed her, prayed, and told his children, who watched the scene, moved:

"It was 55 years... you know? No one can talk about true love if they have no idea what it's like to share life with a woman."

He paused and wiped his face. "She and I, we were together in that crisis. I changed jobs ..." he continued. "We packed up when we sold the house and moved out of town. We shared the joy of seeing our children finish their careers, we mourned the departure of loved ones side by side, we prayed together in the waiting room of some hospitals, we support each other in pain, we hug each Christmas, and we forgive our mistakes... Children, now it's gone, and I'm happy, do you know why?

Because she left before me. She didn't have to go through the agony and pain of burying me, of being left alone after my departure. I will be the one to go through that, and I thank God. I love her so much that I wouldn't have liked her to suffer..."

When my father finished speaking, my brothers and I had tears streaming down our faces. We hugged him, and he comforted us, "It's okay, we can go home, it's been a good day."

That night I understood what true love is; It is far from romanticism, it does not have much to do with eroticism, or with sex, rather it is linked to work, to complement, to care, and, above all, to the true love that two really committed people profess."

Peace in your hearts.

US standard railroad gauge

 

The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used?

Well, because that's the way they built them in England, and English engineers designed the first US railroads. Why did the English build them like that?

Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the wagon tramways, and that's the gauge they used. So, why did 'they' use that gauge then?

Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they had used for building wagons, which used that same wheel spacing. Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing?

Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break more often on some of the old, long distance roads in England . You see, that's the spacing of the wheel ruts. So who built those old rutted roads?

Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (including England ) for their legions. Those roads have been used ever since.

And what about the ruts in the roads?

Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match or run the risk of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome , they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. Therefore the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. Bureaucracies live forever.

So the next time you are handed a specification/procedure/process and wonder 'What horse's ass came up with this?', you may be exactly right. Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses. (Two horses' asses.)

Now, the twist to the story:

When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah . The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains, and the SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds.

So, a major Space Shuttle design feature, of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system, was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass. And you thought being a horse's ass wasn't important? Ancient horse's asses control almost everything.

Hail, Christopher Columbus! ~ The Imaginative Conservative

Hail, Christopher Columbus!

By Bradley J. Birzer

October 10th, 2021

The once-radical belief that Christopher Columbus was evil has sadly become mainstream. But Columbus was a brave and tenacious explorer—flawed, of course, like every man—who expanded the knowledge of the Old World, changing it and the New World forever.

Christopher Columbus changed the world. It’s as simple as this. We might argue that these changes were good, or we might argue these changes were bad, but we’re not going to be able to argue that the changes did not matter. Good or bad—or more likely somewhere in-between—the world became something new when Columbus reached the New World, especially on his second voyage in 1493. Though his life ended poorly, most rational people have recognized his importance in the half-millennium since he first sailed.

In 1893, for example, the world celebrated Columbus’s journeys in one of the greatest world’s fairs yet held, then in Chicago. Buffalo Bill Cody performed there, and Frederick Jackson Turner gave what was arguably the single greatest essay written by an American historian, “The Significance of the Frontier.” Remnants of that celebration still shape the skyline of the Lake Michigan shore.

The New Left happily began to vilify Columbus in the 1960s—in the classrooms, on the streets, and in Hollywood movies (indirectly through Westerns such as Little Big Man)—and, by 1992, the five-hundredth anniversary of his first landing, many colleges had begun to teach Columbus as the harbinger of genocide, a sort of Genoese Hitler. Of all American businesses that year, only Long John Silver’s attempted to promote Columbus as something good, but their marketing campaign failed miserably.

In the unrest of the last few weeks, we have been witness to the all-pervasive influence of the New Left on our culture over the last half-century. What was once radical—a belief that Columbus was evil—has sadly become mainstream. Even organizations dedicated to the victories of Columbus, such as the Roman Catholic Knights of Columbus and Daughters have Isabella, have remained entirely silent as street mobs tear down statues of Columbus in the name of countering genocide. What kind of knights or daughters remain silent while their exemplar is ruthlessly beheaded and devoured by the mob? The Knights and the Daughters should at least have the decency to change their name if they no longer wish to support Christopher Columbus or his extraordinary voyages to expand the Old World into the New.

Whatever Columbus’s intentions, he did change the world. In his profound work of moral philosophy and economics, Adam Smith rightly noted that “the discovery of America, and that of a passage to the East Indies by the Cape of Good Hope, are the two greatest and most important events recorded in the history of mankind.” A more modern scholar, Alfred Crosby stated of Columbus, labeling his voyages the “most important event in human history since the end of the Ice Age.” Let’s leave Jesus out of this for a moment. These are no small claims, and they are no exaggeration. For all intents and purposes, Columbus’s voyages recreated the ancient land mass of Pangea, bringing together what continental drift had broken apart. On his second journey, in 1493, Columbus brought with him—in 17 ships—1,200 men as well as livestock (pigs, chickens, cattle, horses, and sheep).

Overall, the Old World gave to the New: honeybees, cattle, sheep, chicken, horses, wheat, coffee, rice, barley, turnips, cabbage, pears, peaches, lemons, bananas, oranges, and olives.

In turn, the New World gave to the Old: tomatoes, corn, potatoes, peppers, chocolate, beans, pumpkins, squash, peanuts, cashews, pineapples, and sunflowers.

It would be difficult for even the brightest among us to imagine Ireland without the potato or Italy without the tomato. The potato, especially, allowed northern Europe to compete with southern Europe in its crop productivity as well as in the caloric intake of its people. I always joke with my students, while Protestantism did not arise because of the potato, there is no doubt that the central and northern Europeans of Luther’s generation were so much better off than that of pre-contact Europe. Clearly, it would have been harder for Protestantism to maintain itself without the increase of caloric intake among post-contact northern Europeans.

From American natives, Europeans also gained tobacco, coca (including cocaine and eventually Novocain), rubber, and some sports.

In the best book on the subject, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe (1986), Crosby notes that the Europeans changed and quite fundamentally remade the ecosystem of North and South America, knowingly and unknowingly, through four things. First, the Europeans brought with them weeds—plants that had been competing for dominance in the economic and cultural collusion of European, African, and Asian societies. When these “weeds,” such as “Kentucky Blue Grass,” encountered American plants, they predominated.

Second, the same is true of animals. Crosby wrote:

Fortunately for the Europeans, their domesticated and lithely adaptable animals were very effective at initiating that change. The prospective European colonists were livestock people, as their ancestors had been for millennia. The founders of the Neo-Europes were descendants, culturally and often genetically, of the Indo-Europeans, a west Central Eurasian people who spoke the ancestral language of most of the tongues of Europe (English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Russian, etc.), a people who were practicing mixed farming, with heavy emphasis on herding, 4,500 years before Columbus.

Especially damaging was the pig, with its cloven hooves that served as mini-ploughs, breaking the soil and allowing European seeds to colonize.

Finally, and most immediately damaging though, were the “ills,” the diseases such as the poxes that devastated the American Indian populations. Of course, no one understood germ theory until the 1860s, and it did not become commonly believed until the 1890s, so the massive death rates from disease were completely unintentional. As William McNeill has rightly argued, every people, everywhere, has gone through its disease phases from time to time. On the American frontier, diseases spread about 20 miles ahead of European settlement and movement. Disease proved the greatest killer, killing upwards of ninety percent of certain American Indian populations.

Syphilis moved the other direction—from the New to the Old World—and with terrible consequences among the European ruling houses, but it never really affected the average European.

Is Columbus guilty? Of course not. He was a brave and tenacious explorer—flawed, of course, like every man, and guilty of ethical misconduct with some of the Indians he encountered—who expanded the knowledge of the Old World, changing it and the New World forever.

This essay was first published here in June 2020.

The Imaginative Conservative applies the principle of appreciation to the discussion of culture and politics—we approach dialogue with magnanimity rather than with mere civility. Will you help us remain a refreshing oasis in the increasingly contentious arena of modern discourse? Please consider donating now.

TEACHING THE COMMUNIST DOGMA

TEACHING THE COMMUNIST DOGMA

 

OK – I don’t use the “C” word that often.   Folks like the John Birch Society yelled and screamed  communism” so often and so loudly during the past 30 or so years that the word has lost all impact.

 

Having said that, let’s also say that the communist doctrine still exists and there are still a lot of very powerful people in this world who think that communism is definitely the way to go.

 

Now – perhaps the best known single item of communist dogma is the quote “From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.”

 

You should know that this dogma is being taught in many government schools.  Perhaps its being taught, in actions and in words, to your children right now!

 

Remember all those school supplies you bought for your child before school started?  Those pencils, erasers, construction paper, binders, glue, scissors, rulers and whatnot?  Why don’t you ask your child what happened to that stuff?  You might be surprised!

 

In far too many government schools, and in some private schools, the children are told to take their supplies, that’s their property, and dump those supplies into a huge box or bin.  The supplies are then made available to any child in the classroom who has a need for them.  The children are told that it’s not “fair” that their parents could afford to buy them these supplies when some children’s parents can’t afford them.  Therefore, the only “fair” thing to do is for everyone to share and share equally.

 

The lesson?  The lesson is that it is somehow wrong for one child to have something, a nice pencil box, pens, binders – whatever – if another child doesn’t have one.  Private property rights?  Well, evidently these children don’t have rights to any property that other children can’t afford.

 

Do you see what’s being taught here?  These kids are being told that there is something inherently wrong with owning private property while others are going without.  So, the kids who have the “ability” to buy the office supplies will do so (from each according to their ability) and then those supplies will be shared with everyone in the class (to each according to their needs).

 

You think this is a small deal?  Not so.  This is a very impressionable age for these kids.  Lessons learned here are strongly imbedded.  The idea that one should now own and possess something that others don’t have, or can’t afford is poison to the concept of private property rights and capitalism.

 

You make up your own mind.  Is this just well-meaning teachers not realizing the consequences of their policies?  Or is this by design?

 

TAKE BACK THE CAMPUS

 

TAKE BACK THE CAMPUS

 

Are you tired of male-bashing and victimology?

Have you had your fill of feminist "Ms./Information"?

Have you been misled by factually challenged professors?

 

TAKE THIS TEST:

 

Campus feminism is a kind of cult: as early as freshman orientation, professors begin spinning theories about how American women are oppressed under "patriarchy." Here is a list of the most common feminist myths. If you believe two or more of these untruths, you may need deprogramming.

 

THE TEN MOST COMMON FEMINIST MYTHS:

 

1. Myth: One in four women in college has been the victim of rape or attempted rape.

 

Fact: This mother of all factoids is based on a fallacious feminist study commissioned by Ms. magazine. The researcher, Mary Koss, hand-picked by hard-line feminist Gloria Steinem, acknowledges that 73 percent of the young women she counted as rape victims were not aware they had been raped. Forty-three percent of them were dating their "attacker" again.

 

Rape is a uniquely horrible crime. That is why we need sober and responsible research. Women will not be helped by hyperbole and hysteria. Truth is no enemy of compassion, and falsehood is no friend.

 

(Nara Schoenberg and Sam Roe, "The Making of an Epidemic," Toledo Blade, October 10, 1993; and Neil Gilbert, "Examining the Facts: Advocacy Research Overstates the Incidence of Data and Acquaintance Rape," Current Controversies in Family Violence eds. Richard Gelles and Donileen Loseke, Newbury Park, CA.: Sage Publications, 1993, pp.120-132; and Campus Crime and Security, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, 1997. *According to this study, campus police reported 1,310 forcible sex offenses on U.S. campuses in one year. That works out to an average of fewer than one rape per campus.)

 

2. Myth: Women earn 75 cents for every dollar a man earns.

 

Fact: The 75 cent figure is terribly misleading. This statistic is a snapshot of all current full-time workers. It does not consider relevant factors like length of time in the workplace, education, occupation, and number of hours worked per week. (The experience gap is particularly large between older men and women in the workplace.) When economists do the proper controls, the so-called gender wage gap narrows to the point of vanishing.

 

(Essential reading: Women's Figures: An Illustrated Guide to the Economic Progress of Women in America, by Diana Furchtgott-Roth and Christine Stolba, published by the Independent Women's Forum and the American Enterprise Institute, Washington, D.C. 2000.)

 

3. Myth: 30 percent of emergency room visits by women each year are the result of injuries from domestic violence.

 

Fact: This incendiary statistic is promoted by gender feminists whose primary goal seems to be to impugn men. Two responsible government studies report that the nationwide figure is closer to one percent. While these studies may have missed some cases of domestic violence, the 30% figure is a wild exaggeration.

 

(National Center for Health Statistics, National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey: 1992 Emergency Department Summary , Hyattsville, Maryland, March 1997; and U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, Violence-Related Injuries Treated in Hospital Emergency Departments: Washington, D.C., August 1997.)

 

4. Myth: The phrase "rule of thumb" originated in a man's right to beat his wife provided the stick was no wider than his thumb.

 

Fact: This is an urban legend that is still taken seriously by activist law professors and harassment workshoppers. The Oxford English Dictionary has more than twenty citations for phrase "rule of thumb" (the earliest from 1692), but not a single mention of beatings, sticks, or husbands and wives.

 

(For a definitive debunking of the hoax see Henry Ansgar Kelly, "Rule of Thumb and the Folklaw of the Husband's Stick," The Journal of Legal Education, September 1994.)

 

5. Myth: Women have been shortchanged in medical research.

 

Fact: The National Institutes of Health and drug companies routinely include women in clinical trials that test for effectiveness of medications. By 1979, over 90% of all NIH-funded trials included women. Beginning in 1985, when the NIH's National Cancer Center began keeping track of specific cancer funding, it has annually spent more money on breast cancer than any other type of cancer. Currently, women represent over 60% of all subjects in NIH-funded clinical trials.

 

(Essential reading: Cathy Young and Sally Satel, "The Myth of Gender Bias in Medicine," Washington, D.C.: The Women's Freedom Network, 1997.)

 

6. Myth: Girls have been shortchanged in our gender-biased schools

 

Fact: No fair-minded person can review the education data and conclude that girls are the have-nots in our schools. Boys are slightly ahead of girls in math and science; girls are dramatically ahead in reading and writing. (The writing skills of 17-year-old boys are at the same level as 14-year- old girls.) Girls get better grades, they have higher aspirations, and they are more likely to go to college.

 

(See: Trends in Educational Equity of Girls & Women, Washington, D. C.: U.S. Department of Education, June 2000.)

 

7. Myth: "Our schools are training grounds for sexual harassment... boys are rarely punished, while girls are taught that it is their role to tolerate this humiliating conduct."

 

(National Organization of Women, "Issue Report: Sexual Harassment," April 1998.)

 

Fact: "Hostile Hallways," is the best-known study of harassment in grades 8-11. It was commissioned by the American Association of University Women (AAUW) in 1993, and is a favorite of many harassment experts. But this survey revealed that girls are doing almost as much harassing as the boys. According to the study, "85 percent of girls and 76 percent of boys surveyed say they have experienced unwanted and unwelcome sexual behavior that interferes with their lives."

 

(Four scholars at the University of Michigan did a careful follow-up study of the AAUW data and concluded: "The majority of both genders (53%) described themselves as having been both victim and perpetrator of harassment -- that is most students had been harassed and had harassed others." And these researchers draw the right conclusion: "Our results led us to question the simple perpetrator-victim model...".) (See: American Education Research Journal, Summer 1996.)

 

8. Myth: Girls suffer a dramatic loss of self-esteem during adolescence.

 

Fact: This myth of the incredible shrinking girls was started by Carol Gilligan, professor of gender studies at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Gilligan has always enjoyed higher standing among feminist activists and journalists than among academic research psychologists. Scholars who follow the protocols of social science do not accept the reality of an adolescent "crisis" of confidence and "loss of voice." In 1993, American Psychologist reported the new consensus among researchers in adolescent development: "It is now known that the majority of adolescents of both genders successfully negotiate this developmental period without any major psychological or emotional disorder [and] develop a positive sense of personal identity. …"

 

(Anne C. Petersen et al. "Depression in Adolescence," American Psychologist February 1993; see also, Daniel Offer, and Kimberly Schonert-Reichl, "Debunking the Myths of Adolescence: Findings from Recent Research," Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, November 1992.)

 

9. Myth: Gender is a social construction.

 

Fact: While environment and socialization do play a significant role in human life, a growing body of research in neuroscience, endocrinology, and psychology over the past 40 years suggests there is a biological basis for many sex differences in aptitudes and preferences. In general, males have better spatial reasoning skills; females better verbal skills. Males are greater risk takers; females are more nurturing.

 

Of course, this does not mean that women should be prevented from pursuing their goals in any field they choose; what it does suggest is that we should not expect parity in all fields. More women than men will continue to want to stay at home with small children and pursue careers in fields like early childhood education or psychology; men will continue to be over-represented in fields like helicopter mechanics and hydraulic engineering.

 

Warning: Most gender scholars in our universities have degrees in fields like English or comparative literature--not biology or neuroscience. These self-appointed experts on sexuality are scientifically illiterate. They substitute dogma and propaganda for reasoned scholarship.

 

(For a review of recent findings on sex differences see a special issue of The Scientific American [Special Quarterly Issue] "Men: The Scientific Truth," Summer 1999.)

 

10. Myth: Women's Studies Departments empowered women and gave them a voice in the academy.

 

Fact: Women's Studies empowered a small group of like-minded careerists. They have created an old-girl network that is far more elitist, narrow and closed than any of the old-boy networks they rail against. Vast numbers of moderate or dissident women scholars have been marginalized, excluded and silenced.

 

(Essential reading: everything by Camille Paglia; Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge--Professing Feminism: Cautionary Tales from the Strange World of Women's Studies; and Christina Hoff Sommers--Who Stole Feminism? How Women have Betrayed Women.)

 

**Should you encounter an item of Ms/information in one of your classes, in a textbook, or a women's center "fact" sheet, let us know. We will print it on our campus website, SheThinks.org, correct it with accurate information, and politely inform the source of the mistake.

 

We are a women's group dedicated to restoring reason, common sense and open discussion to the campus.