Women and Lawyers

Men like to play games and they like to play hardball. Women, on the other hand, have been taught that it's not nice to play hardball and that communication and negotiation are the best solutions. However, this tactic simply doesn't work for ruthless people who don't understand how to give as well as take.

I have a friend who isn't divorced yet, but she has made a mistake already. She moved out of her house and left her children with her husband because, as rumor goes (and no one can really tell the truth in any divorce), he cheated on her and she can't stand to be near him. Okay. Fine. But, instead of understanding the game, this woman has chosen to play the victim. What can this cost her? Without an attorney, she could lose the house and custody of her children if he begins to realize that he has grounds for "abandonment" even though he allegedly committed adultery. The issue is that in a game of hardball, you need a lawyer before you decide to take things into your own hand. I have kept lawyers available to me year-round with a pre-paid legal plan and I have never in any instant regretted it. Some people are simply unscrupulous and require someone with equal lack of scruples for them to deal with, and I do admit, that is a lawyer. Nothing right or wrong about that.

Take for instance the case of simmons jannace & stagg. They represented a woman who hired a lawyer after 9/11 to represent her in her claim for compensation from the September 11th Victims Compensation Fund. It was already stated within the guidelines for seeking compensation that contigency fees for lawyers were disfavored. However, this lawyer thought it would be worth his while to then turn around and sue his female client, a widow now, for 2 million dollars for his "fee" in Federal courts. So, she hired another lawyer from the firm of simmons jannace & stagg to represent her. Clearly, a lawyer is entitled to a fee but 2 million dollars to represent one woman? So, simmons jannace & stagg managed to get the case stayed on the argument that the Federal courts had no jurisdiction in the matter, and they agreed. Only state courts have jurisdiction.

So, whether this case goes to state court or not, the implication is obvious. If a lawyer or any unscrupulous person wants to sue you - get yourself a lawyer. Do not talk. Do not negotiate. Simply steer clear and let someone who likes these sorts of games play for you. If the lawyer then wants to sue you, get yourself another lawyer. These people only understand one thing: how to play hardball. They are not interested in justice or fairness, merely money. If you can hire another lawyer who is willing to be paid less that 2 million to get some other lawyer off your back, go for it! Women need to learn how to protect themselves and how to play the game when they choose and how to avoid it completely when they don't want to play it. Let those who like to play, play. And then go on your merry way keeping yourself as free from these shenanigans as you can.

When my daughter was young, she used to get a big kick out of hiding under a blanket and sneaking up on us. She thought we wouldn't see her because she couldn't see us. I guess even adults play this game: "What you can't see, won't hurt you." That's why many of today's policies are geered towards obvious discriminations like the color of a person's skin or gender. But, there are stil hidden factors that never get highlighted that do affect the quality of life for people. We are a society geared towards "image" and what it represents. And this in effect, makes us myopic towards things that aren't easily distinguished through differences in image.

Guy Debord speaks of this in his book:"The Society of the Spectacle." Although, I found the format a difficult read, it was still worthwhile in concept. Guy believes we are a society of the spectacle, accustomed to image and gearing our entire society on only things we see. This is how we identify value in something or not.

Google is beta testing a search algorithm that now will rank pages based on accessibility standards as well as content. These accesibility standards are not based on image, but rather, on how well a site is coded for handicapped individuals to access and text. Blind people who surf the web often use machines to read text off the web sites. But, if a site is all images, they end up reading image tags all day! Quite a frustrating experience! So, here we see a little of that shift going from only an image-based society to something deeper which is more egalitarian to everyone.

There is a search engine marketing firm, called Usweb.com, that specializes in search engine optimization, including web accessibility standards. They note that certain sites will fall in rankings as Google unrolls this new algorith while others, like .gov and .edu sites will increase ranking. Another bright point: Blogs will also increase in rankings since they are mostly text!

Speaking of gender beliefs...

We all have them, but some are less liberating than others. I find it interesting that the woman's movement began by focusing on what men did wrong. As women, we have been indoctrinated to always look at others before self. We're rewarded for playing with dolls and taking care of their needs. We're told we are "good girls" if we do things for others, even to the point of denying our own dreams and desires. The religious institutions all over the globe claim we are somehow only put on this earth to propagate humanity and it's our holy role to be good mothers and care-takers for all dependent people whether it is children, the sick, or the elderly. That that's not men's role. That is uniquely a female role. What this does is take our attention away from self and instead of becoming forces of social change by using our feminine energy to address social issues, we become mired in petty roles that sometimes hold no intrinsic value for us. All giving and receiving should come from the heart and not the social expectation, otherwise, it limits our sense of self and our ability to self-develop and progress. And oftentimes, we are made to believe that is in our benefit! There are ways to stay self-focused and be giving when it aligns with our own sense of being. To enforce a role of martyrdom and victimhood on all of the female gender goes beyond holiness, it's pure brain-washing. And often, it is the women themselves who are indoctrinated that are most vocal defendents of this belief system.

So, as a humorous look at just one of the destructive belief systems that women have aligned with in our own gender, I wrote another blog in response to a challenge by a man named Deorre. He asked us to take any subject and write a conspiracy theory on it. I chose: Women's Holy Mission To Serve Humanity. I got a lot of feedback on this blog as many women saw themselves in it and many men breathed a sigh of relief. Someone had to say it.

Who is Wafa Sultan?

She is a Muslim women who has immigrated to to the United States, become a psychiatrist, and is fiercely speaking out about the Muslim culture as it regards to women and religion. In an article in the International Herald Tribune, entitled A voice agains Muslim 'hostages' to terror, Sultan's views are quoted thus: "The world's Muslims, who she compares unfavorably to the Jews, have descended into a vortex of self-pity and violence."

A direct quote attributed to Wafa Sultan in the same article states: "I believe our people are hostages to our own beliefs and teachings..."

We create our reality through our alignment with particular beliefs. It seems that only when they become absolute truths to us and we attempt to convince others that war and conflict results. Is Wafa Sultan helping free Muslims or is he hurting them? Is she helping Muslim women? Is it necessary to oppose something in order to change it? Or can we simply accept these beliefs and learn to use different aspects of the same beliefs that are more positive? What does you, the reader, think?

See what other people are saying about Wafa Sultan.

Sexual Liberation and the Muslim Woman

My favorite shows are reality tv shows, and so I have watched the plastic surgery reality tv shows. I remember one in particular where a muslim woman came for hymen reconstruction. It was shocking to me that a young woman would be forced to go to such extremes in this day and age. Virginity is highly prized in the muslim faith, but more so it is regarded as a question of family honor. If a woman is found to have lost her virginity before marriage her family may even undertake an honor killing to avenge this supposed wrong. When life becomes less valuable just because it is female and has chosen to give of itself when it chooses, then there's something seriously wrong with a culture. It's no less different than when Chinese couples kill their female children because they prize their male children more.

I weep for the women around the world who have to put up with such indignities. I hope someday these things will be a thing of the past. Until then, despite the mostly narcissistic reasons for plastic surgery, there are actually times when plastic surgery is warranted as in when it saves a life due to religious ideals gone wrong. The show I watched was about a beverly hills plastic surgeon who provided provided expert breast enhancement with both saline and silicone breast implants. He did liposuction and facelifts also, but by far, the most touching episode was the hymen reconstruction. It speaks a lot to the discrimination women put up with every day all over the world.

Where Being Female Pays

So, we often are so focused on the discrepancy between male and female wages that we forget to actually look for where it might pay to be female: Car insurance. I'm sure I still have plenty to write about automotive maintenance, but when it comes to car insurance, we girls win! Yes, gender and age are taken into account when being handed a car insurance quote.

All insurance companies set their rates by way of determining their risks. They do this through compilation of various statistics and according to the insurance companiees, women are far less riskier than males of the same age when it comes to driving behavior. Age and marital status also influence what type of rate you get. The older you get, the more experience and maturity the car insurance companies believe you have. Being married, apparently lowers your car insurance rate, which I think is just plain bias. Why should a woman have to marry just to lower her insurance even more. You'd think they would penalize her for marrying a high risk driver!

Anyways, apparently, car insurance companies think women are far calmer drivers that males. Kind of shoots the old "bad women driver" myth in the foot, doesn't it?

One wonderful idea has come about of the UK: temporary comprehensive coverage. Seriously. You can get a car insurance quote for that special someone who wants to loan your cars for a couple of days. You can choose to cover someone for up to 28 days. Why do I think this is a great idea? Simply because in the UK it's about 10 pounds per day and 4 pounds (about $20 and $8 respectively) thereafter. If it was established in the US, why cover your husband or boyfriend for the time he's not driving your car? He's a high risk anyway.

Then if you take a trip to your Orlando Vacation Rental and need to share the driving, take your husband or whomever and take your car (with the lower insurance rate) and add them on temporarily. You might save money that way. An interesting coincidence about Orlando is that just a 45 minute drive from the theme parks takes you countryside very similar to the UK with rolling hills and oak trees. Orlando has some of the best shopping experiences in the U.S. and the Everglades just to the South, as well, but you got to drive to get there! Coincidentally, the UK is where the temporary comprehensive coverage appears to have started. But, it doesn't appear to be available in the U.S. yet.

Also, if you don't drive your car every day, maybe they would let us get short term insurance for ourselves! I think that would save a lot of money on insurance! I would just schedule certain days when I use the cars, and others when it just stays parked, if they had such a flexible plan. Seeing that regular insurance costs hundreds a month, this would be a real flexible way to handle insurance for those of us who don't go out a lot or who have people who constantly want to borrow our car. Or we could just have one car for several people. Co-oping cars! We could reduce a ton of waste in this country if we did that.

Women Networking for Women

Let's face it, the good ol' boys know how to network for business, but women sadly don't have such an efficient resource. We're stuck trying to take care of other people's needs until we divorce, someone dies, and then maybe we're left unable to enter the workforce with any reasonable skills and knowing no one in business. What are we to do?

I say we must start networking amongst ourselves. That's right. Women networking for women...not men. If you hear of a job opening, or are in charge of hiring, why not hire a woman? Men choose men over women all the time in business! How are we going to change the corporate structure to be more women-friendly unless more women are sitting on those boards? How are they going to get there? Someone has to hire them and someone has to promote them.

Some more progressive places than the United States have already set up quotas based on gender. Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark all have tried this with astonishing success. Take a look at how board quotas shake up the sexual status quo.

But, then, some of these places also have free health care for their citizenry, something the United States has failed to implement despite numerous politician's sounding the "family values" trumpet. We need change in this country and we need it on the issues that are close to women's hearts: family, health, community, and support.

Why are women still struggling to survive?

According to the Ohio State University fact sheet, about 13.7% of the total U.S. population can be said to be poor. Of that, 57.2% are females and 42.7% are males. That's a whopping difference of 14%. Why is that? Why are there more poor women then poor men?

This fact sheet attributes the disparity to single family households where the mother is the sole provider for the children. Education levels are not as high for women as for men which contributes to only being able to obtain low level skilled jobs. But, in addition to that, women make only 60 cents for every dollar that a man makes due to bias within our society toward male "breadwinners."

I do not know how current this study is, but the challenges that women face today are no different now than in the last few thousand years. We are expected to care for the children which limits our ability to work outside the home. We can hire nannies, if we make enough money, but if we don't we face some very hard choices about how our children are to be cared for and what jobs we can do so that they are not abandoned or neglected while we choose to work.

Personally, I think this data is outrageous and something needs to be done. We can't wait for government to step in and help us. They are too busy fighting wars and sending our children to die in them. It's okay for us to struggle to raise them as long as they make it to eighteen so they can be shipped to Iraq or some other flavor of the day war. We can't wait for the employers to cough up an equal pay for equal work, simply because most of them are headed by men with corporate boards dominated by men. We don't need to ask permission from husbands, lovers, or whomever we have been taught may be an authority over our lives. We can see just from the data that they don't give a fig about what is happening to women all over the U.S.

We must learn to help ourselves. We, women, must learn what it takes to make the world a hospitable place for us. We must band together and network and we must "take back the night." This blog is for all the women out there struggling to survive. I hear you, sisters.