The Roar That Increasingly Meows

Tags

Betty Friedan, equality, feminism, Germaine Greer, NOW, Women's issues, women's movement, women's rights

As I started to think about the role of women in the world, prompted by the article I will presently link you to, I realized that in the 800 odd posts I’ve made to this blog, nary a one has been dedicated fully to feminism. And that is truly odd.

Does it mean I think that things are so swimmingly good that it no longer needs a voice? Surely not. But I imagine it signifies a certain complacency that things aren’t so terribly bad either. I got what I wanted in other words.

Germaine Greer, icon extraordinaire, has done a lovely job of reminiscing about the past 40+ years and kinda of giving us an update. It is not called the long revolution for nothing. It should be noted that this link comes via 3quarksdaily.

What we see mostly nowadays is a yearly assessment of pay scales, women always falling somewhere short of men for doing the same work.  It seems rather flat these days, with little change over the past few years as best as I can tell. Occasionally there is a report on how women are making inroads into more and more boardrooms and a profession here and there, but frankly little else.

As Greer points out, almost as soon as real progress was made, there were women who claimed that they were unfulfilled in the work place and yearned for a return to the home. Whether that expresses true desire or only the worn out pleas of women expected to do everything and still  smile is perhaps unknowable.

Read the article, which is both long and entirely rewarding, especially on the state of women’s advancement toward equality in Africa, India and Asia. Some things change, and then some change again, or never, it seems.

I look back upon my own life and marvel at what I assumed as a child. I was a girl child, destined, in my mind to be wife and mother, yet feeling oddly estranged from that whole thing most of my preteen and teen life. By graduation, I felt it was not likely for me.

I entered college with the intent of becoming a top rate secretary. How very 50’s of me, wouldn’t you say. A great instructor who shook me up with questions, turned me to a more serious pursuit of education and bigger horizons. Yet, even then I dismissed medicine, flying jets, or any number of otherwise “male” pursuits. I had absorbed  my lessons well.

I admit most assuredly that law school would not have been possible for me had it not been for a ton of great women from Greer to Friedan and hosts of others who broke this ground. In fact, by the time I applied, law schools were trying hard to fulfill quotas for women.

I met many loud and demanding women in law school, and many who were not. Men were contemptuous and they were supportive. After a few years of practice in the law, it all seemed essentially normal. I had won my piece of the equality pie.

Yet, I never perhaps grew out of my upbringing. Emotionally and psychologically that is. And that is a shame. Born to a woman who never read a book that I ever saw, never read the papers except for ads and coupons, was a Republican but had no idea why, and so became a Democrat because her husband told her to, that was my upbringing.

“You gotta suffer to be beautiful,” she used to say, as she sashayed through the house in tight petal pushers and “shell” tops, off to work in the factory, producing the proverbial widget. A hair appointment once a week, nail polish and toe polish required, eye shadow and mascara, and perfume completed the picture.

It never occurred to her to try to move up to management, or to ask for a raise. It never occurred to her that her daughter being a lawyer meant anything other than a new tool in her bag of “top this one” among her friends.

My father was no better, and perhaps hated women deep down. Surely my lawyering was of no import as he told me I had no idea what I was talking about when I tried to explain the vagaries of search and seizure regarding automobiles to him one day. So much for all that money and time expended poring over law books.

I got lucky in the end, marrying a superbly supportive, non-sexist man. My retreat from the law business came not from a desire to return to the hearth, so much as I just hated the damn subject matter. Been there done that. How many hundreds of concealed weapon cases can one have before it ceases to peak an interest? After a few thousand  I reached my nadir.

I’m a typical housewife these days. I do most of the cooking and most of the cleaning, but not all. And the Contrarian does all of the car maintenance and all of the wood work and all of the repair stuff. So we play our roles as expected. Yet, we don’t feel, either one of us, that they are assigned roles, just ones that we are most comfortable in, and well, to a degree, like better than alternatives. I don’t wish his work, and mostly he doesn’t wish mine.

The only place I find resistance to feminism, is in the wacky world of the right wing. In the usual pick and choose fashion, the male believer of the fundamentalist persuasion just loves him some of that Timothy and other  pseudo-Paul doctrine to give him a arrogant step to his walk. The world is still safe, or would be, if men were in charge. (Picture the historical wrongness of that doctrine for a bit!)

And the revolution is long, and it does continue.

Our National Schizophrenia

Tags

class society, Entertainment, equality, Hollywood, Jesse James, psychology, Sandra Bullock, sociology

No doubt something to the same effect could be said about most countries, most societies. They, as we, are a series of contradictions and about faces. We find ways of avoiding the truth: namely that we often sit on both sides of the fence. And we don’t seem particularly troubled about that fact.

Arguably, one of the main reasons for our Revolution was the desire to make it clear that we are not a class society. We disapprove of such things, and we rejected the model of monarchy as a godly right of the aristocracy.

We in fact rejected aristocracy. We were to be a free nation, one governed by equality. Everyone can grow up to be president. And so it goes. There were to be no castes, no serfs and masters, no proletariat and oligarchy. Yet, in opting for the concept of equality, we hinted at communism, which is based on such a theory. We just as quickly turned our back on such principles when we instituted and fought over slavery as a means of economic and social convention.

We staved off communism, by pursuing a free market economy, wherein each was free to compete. There would be winners and losers, wealthy and poor, but it was conceived that this was a personal decision to work hard or not, achieve or not. Thus we come to our conclusion that government mandated “welfare” however defined is somehow unAmerican.

We carry this far, this notion of “nobody is better than me” mentality. If asked, probably half of the working “class” would insist it is middle class, though it meets no parameters that define that group.

We pursue this agenda today in the touting of candidates who are “just like us” and those we could comfortably sit down and have a beer with. These are pluses in our minds as to why a candidate is a good one or not. We downplay intelligence and education as indices of being “better.” In fact, we dismiss such people as “uppity” and elitist, and claim they are trying to be better than we.

Yet, we have created the most artificial of all classes, independent of all the usual motifs. Not the business class, nor the super inherited wealth class, nor the white collar, nor blue, nor any other rational standard.

The standard is simple: entertain me and I’ll place you on a pedestal and I will grant you all manner of excuses for your behavior that I would never accept in family or friend. I will make you a class unto yourself. And through this medium the gossip columnist, and The Inquirer were born. For however much we might allow them, we still enjoy cutting them to pieces. We choose our sides.

Enter one Sandra Bullock. A good actor, most would agree. I personally know nothing about her beyond that, other than that she seems nice. This however, has proven time and again to be no harbinger of truth.

Let me state this again. I know nothing about the woman. Further, I know nothing about her husband Jesse James, other than the name suggests perhaps some care in proceeding further.

I don’t know if marrying him was a huge leap of faith for her, or business as usual from her background. I don’t know if he is a brilliant unpolished gem of intellect, or a rough biker beer swilling idiot. No clue.

Yet, millions, or so it seems, are vested in this drama now being played out. For Ms. Bullock had lots of very nice things to say about her then husband, and the tragedy is that she was unaware than only days later his infidelities would be announced. The man who “had her back” had been having a very long affair. The man, most would think should be thanking his lucky stars every day that such a lovely lady had deemed him worthy, was shleping it to another biker babe and had for a good long time.

Most of these millions, have no knowledge greater than mine, but I’d be willing to bet that the mail is running about 95-5 against Mr. James. Sandra, for all we know, may be a she-witch and may have driven the mild mannered man to another’s arms by her miserable emotional abuse. I have no clue, but she is firmly the injured party, and Mr. James is the villain and that is not likely to change.

For you see, we have placed Ms. Bullock on a pedestal–granting her special dispensation to be more volatile, more demanding, more particular than the rest of us. She is a “star” and we all know that they have pressures upon them, the likes of which the rest of us can only guess. Stars are entitled to hissy fits and demands for particular brands of bottled water in their suites.

Not saying of course that Ms. Bullock is like this. But she could be, and all would still be fine with us. For we have admitted that the rules don’t apply to her. Much like Tiger Woods who acknowledged that his transgressions were the result in part of believing that he was somehow entitled to these “extras” in life.

So perhaps we cause these falls from grace when they do occur, and we artificially prop up those who deserve to fall but don’t. We cause it by our relentless turning aside all the bad behavior they often exhibit and call it just “creative” acting out.

But why we, who are so jealous of our equality, play this game at all, is still a wonder. Perhaps it is true of other places as well, but we have a long history if this. We now pay millions to each of these “stars” whether of screen or field or bandstand. And we turn a blind eye to their failings, and we talk of them as if we knew them, and we protect them as if they were our own family.

I’ve never understood it. As always, I ask the questions.

Just sayin’.

I Can Hear You If You Stop Screaming!

Tags

Charlie Crist, equality, euthanasia, Florida, GOP, health care reform, Latinos, Mel Martinez, Sarah Palin, townhall meetings, Women's issues

We were wondering  just where Sarah “the Quitter” Palin got her “death panel” remarks for her Facebook post. We surely knew it was not from reading the various health care bills making the rounds of Congress. She doesn’t errrr, read much, and has shown a shocking disinterest in policy in general.

Well, we have the answer. No other place than the NRC, that bastion of brilliance run by our every wondrous Michael Steele.  It is they who are arguing that the government wants to promote euthanasia and so forth. 

At least some Republicans, who have some sense of honor, are backing away from these lies, such as Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) who admits they are nothing but scare tactics. Columnist David Brooks called her remarks “crazy.” Just so you know, Newt thinks she’s spot on, but Newt is so spot off, nobody pays any attention.

Of course the tea-baggers/astroturfers are nothing new in America. Periodically, we have flirted with this type of kill democracy and do it our way types. For a nice run down historically on the crazy element in American politics, slip on over to the The Daily Dish and read Andrew Sullivan’s take.

All of this raises the ugly specter we looked at a few weeks ago about hate speech and how much we can tolerate it when so many people think it gives them a license to go out and do violence. An excellent post at HuffPo examines this issue, and is worth a look see.

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The wingnuts appear from all places and get into all manner of stuff. The Rev. Elizabeth Kaeton tells us all about the “True Woman” movement.

Yes indeed, not to be believed in this day and age, but it’s true. They have conferences and teach women to be “biblical” and “complimentary” and basically walk two paces behind.

At the last meeting in Chicago in 2008, 6,000 demented females attended, all intent on affirming “male masculinity”  and being “subservient” in the name of Christ.

I kid you not, these folks are back to the “women who are abused bring it upon themselves by not behaving.”

Elizabeth does an excellent job of exploring the issue, giving you plenty of links and looking at various groups in this genre of living.

If you don’t read any other link, this is the one I would choose.

***

Ya see, everyone knew that Mel Martinez (R-FL) was retiring and not running for re-election. He was also public about his support of  Latina SCOTUS nominee, and now associate justice, Sonia Sotomayor.

What nobody guessed is that Martinez would stick it to his Republican colleagues by quitting now and not finishing out his term. 

After spending eight long years attempting to court the Latino population in the US of A, Rethugs country wide have given up and decided it ain’t worth the effort. They just don’t really like those folks. Martinez stayed long enough to vote for Justice Sotomayor’s confirmation and then said adios amigos.

Worse yet, and calculated no doubt to inflict the most damage, this puts Republican governor Charlie Crist in a dilemma. You see Crist was planning on running for that office himself. Now he has to appoint an interim person to complete the term. Does he put in someone who promises not to run against him, and be seen as a self-serving politico, or does he put in someone who actually has interest in the job and is thus a potential rival?

Such things seem to happen to the GOP daily. Now they got no Latinos in their camp, and only one African American of “stature” and well, that’s saying it tongue in cheek, Michael Steele! It seems the Rethugs are back to being pretty much the party of old white and angry men. Oh we forgot, Sarah is their darling “girly” female type. Yeah, I’d go with that!

Well, enough of my ranting, Hope you have some nice weather you way. We’ve had hellacious thunderboomers and sheets of rain periodically. Hope you made it to church if that’s your persuasion. I did, and it always makes me feel renewed for the week.

As we say in The Episcopal church, “the worship is over, the service begins.” Now get out there and make a difference this week!