The results of the 13th Election of County Magistrate and City Mayor were announced. Three of the elected are women: Lu Xiu-Lian in Taoyuan County, Chang Wen-Ying in Taichung City and Zhang Bo-Ya in Jiayi City. All three of them have won the election by considerably large margins. However, during the campaign, the closer it got to the election date, the more people deployed gender issues as weapons against opponents. For instance:

A. Mu Min-Zhu, the spokesperson of KMT Department of Cultural Affairs, called a press conference to reprimand and accuse DDP of objectifying and sexualizing women.

B. In support of a candidate in Jiayi, famous woman writer Li Ang auctioned her controversial novel, in which she blatantly insinuated DDP's spokesperson Chen Wen-Chian's promiscuity.

C. Supports of Lu of Taoyuan County used a comic of "Men and Women of the County Council Bathing Together" to criticize the building of a sauna for the Council. Lu's opponent Chen Ken-De, the chair of the Council, countered this attack by declaring the accusation as an insult directed against women.

D. KMT's candidate for Taichung City, Hong Chao-Nan, criticized that his opponent Chang Wen-Ying's husband has married more than once. He also explicitly using graphic terms to describe Chen Wen-Chian's sex life, and the latter was suing him for defamation.

Gender issues have always been included in any public office elections. Unfortunately, it has been extremely rare that they were included on platform for serious considerations in terms of policy reform. Oftentimes, they were used to smear certain opponents' public images or sensationalized as a means to attracting media attention. During this election, there was one particular phenomenon we would like to bring to everybody's attention: Why is it that whenever a woman was shown however remotely related anything sexual, she would have to put on the most dramatic public performance in order to clear her from any bad (read sexual) name? The Mother/Whore binary in the patriarchal culture is still haunting all of us.

Chen Jin-Hsin is now under arrest. The rapes he have committed have been gradually brought to light; 15 cases have been confirmed to date. During the investigation, Chen insisted that he had to rape to relieve his sexual urge because he had implanted a number of steel globe-like objects into parts of his penis which made masturbation extremely painful. Several gynecologists soon denied this claim's validity. Chen's testimony, on the other hand, exposed the degree of the police cover-up. Moreover, some of the victims' personal information leaked out during the investigation and was made public in certain media. This with no doubt entailed a secondary rape, hurting the victims even more.

The Sexual Assault Crime Prevention Act was legislated in an extremely hurried manner last year after Peng Wan-Ru's murder/rape case. It is clearly against this new law that any rape victim's personal information be revealed to the media. A year has past and Peng's murderer is still at large; without the general public support, the law protecting women from sexual violence remains mere words on paper.

The controversies around the legal prostitution issues in Taipei are far from being resolved. Taipei City Police Department has decided to file a counter motion against the proposed Taipei Licensed Prostitute Management Rules. The City government asserted that these regulations would only satisfy the desire of those formerly legal prostitutes but they were against the common good of the entire citizenry. Members of Legal Prostitute's Self-Help Campaign have decided to convert a mini-van into a "Brothel on the Road". They will bring the van to the City Hall for more protest as well as use it as a mobile location at which their livelihood can be made.

After Taipei City Council legislated standard procedures for medical attention for sexually assaulted women, the Bureau for Public Health was under a process of reviewing the execution of these procedures. In order together more accurate information, the Bureau sent out agents as victims to various municipal hospitals, but the results were more than disappointing. Hospitals like Chung- Hsiao or Chung Xin, for example, were acting rather coldly and indifferently to the victims, while nurses at Women and Children's Hospital were able to respond immediately and appropriately according to the mandates of the procedures. Parts of the requirement involved immediate personal attention, protection of privacy and co-consultation with certified clinical social workers. The Bureau of Public Health has decided to conduct similar random check-up to ensure the abiding of these procedures.

We salute Taipei City's Bureau of Public Health. To safeguard the effectiveness of any government policies and regulations, all the public agencies have to fulfill their administrative responsibilities as best as they can.

To protest against the irresponsible treatment of his only son's death while serving in the military, the famous Dr. Lei Tsi-Wen committed suicide by burning himself, as well as most of his property, to destruction. A few days before his death during an interview with some media. the late, Dr. Lei told the press that, although he had his son with one of his employees, according to Chinese custom, his only son, then already dead, was entitled to inherit all that he had ever possessed.

According to a survey conducted by the Taiwan Family Plan Research Center, there are 22, 568 "imported brides" in Taiwan now, among whom 9,555, about 42%, are from Mainland China. Among all these women, however, only 44.5% of them are using any contraceptive measures, this ratio is far lower than the 80% rate among local married women.

Associated Miss Venezuela has long celebrated its reputation of being the most successful training institute for beauty queens all over the world. However, its training sessions begin at 7:00 in the morning and lasts until midnight everyday. The curriculum includes dieting, Q & A assimilation, cat-walking, and plastic surgery.

A landlord has been caught installing a hidden camera to record some of his female tenants in the shower. The strange thing was this behavior did not violate any criminal law. This voyeur was ordered by the court to pay a total of NT$ 60,000 damages to the victims for the violation of their privacy.