Gail Collins, in the NYTimes:
… The great thing about Equality Day is that it works in two ways. We can mull both how far we’ve come and how far we have to go. The one thought feeds the other. The idea of having 50 women in the U.S. Senate, or 250 female C.E.O.’s in the Fortune 500 seems less far-reaching if you contemplate the fact that in the 1960s, a spokesman for NASA said “talk of an American spacewoman makes me sick to my stomach.” Now, one of the two American astronauts on the International Space Station is a woman, and that is so routine that we’re not even aware of her name. (It’s Karen Nyberg.)
Monday is also the anniversary of the 1970 women’s march for equality in New York, which almost no one expected to be a very big deal. The New York Police Department had only given the marchers permission to use one lane of Fifth Avenue. “Then more people came and more people came and we spilled over, and we took over the entire avenue,” recalled Robin Morgan, the feminist author and activist. “And that was the moment your heart really sang. People were hanging out windows. I kept yelling: ‘Join us!’ ” And some of them, Morgan said, did just that.
Parades are great. For a long time, the drive for suffrage was seen as a depressing slog of petition-gathering by middle-class clubwomen. Then the parades started, and the movement belonged to everyone…
There don’t seem to be a lot of parades planned for Monday, which is probably all for the best. Once a parade becomes an annual institution, it becomes less about a political point and more about the afterparties. But we are going to have one heck of a time in 2020.
NotMax
Remember well the “Women’s Lib” extra-curricular group in high school, which pre-dated that parade by some time.
They excluded males from joining or attending meetings (and were permitted to do so) which put a damper on goodwill.
NotMax
That certainly is grossly short-sighted and gives short shrift to the countries, states, territories and colonies that passed women’s suffrage before the U.S. did so. Not to mention belittling the courage and conviction of women in the U.S. from the Seneca Falls Convention onwards.
Betty Cracker
@NotMax: Maybe they needed a space of their own more than the “good will” of the men who wanted to join, who would likely have dominated the proceedings, even if they meant well.
gene108
@NotMax:
Being high school, I think there probably was a strong possibility that a certain percentage of boys who may have joined would be thinking “girl ‘women’s-libbers’ they must be sluts, I’m going to get laid”.
I’m sure some boys, who would join would be sincere but I’m not sure if there was a way to figure out how to get rid of the riff-raff, once you let all the boys in.
Botsplainer
@Betty Cracker:
That all worked out so very well for passage of the Equal Rights Amendment and for mass public adoption of the inherent libertarian premises contained in Blackmun’s Roe v Wade opinion, with its penumbra approach to finding a right to privacy from the government.
Botsplainer
@gene108:
That still doesn’t explain how and why that attitude extended throughout all age demographics of the movement beyond high school.
Somebody needed to yank out Helen Reddy’s vocal cords.
fuckwit
Not to piss in the punchbowl, but one of the more disturbing theories I’ve seen on the status of equaity today, is this, http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2013/01/no_self-respecting_woman_would.html , and the lede is deeply buried:
The whole article is densely packed, infuriating at times, but illuminating.
gene108
The women’s suffrage movement really does not get the coverage it deserves in the media.
Given the coverage the U.S. Civil War still gets today, I don’t think the suffrage movement was so long ago that avid scholarship and historical reporting on the topic would be logistically difficult. There should still be enough media accounts, photographs and first hand accounts by the participants to put together more literature on the topic.
I think the media, if it cared, could probably drum up interest if it wanted to. There was a successful mini-series about John Adams on a cable network not too long ago, even though John Adams was not one of the more popular Revolutionary War historical figures and has become little more than a footnote in high school history textbooks between the presidencies of Washington and Jefferson.
Botsplainer
@gene108:
Women’s Rights activists wouldn’t want it to be covered in anything other than their own terms. No men could be included in the planning or management of the production, it would be liberally sprinkled with segments on Bella Abzug and Gloria Steinem, and Catherine MacKinnon would insist on being a lead consultant. It would be a production that would be watchable by about 18 people, but it would be pure, and it would be another great leap in Taking Back the Night from the cruel, cruel forces of patriarchy and oppression.
BruceFromOhio
@fuckwit:
Yes, regressive, as well as kind of assholish, among other adjectives.
Where I live, nursing is one of the few opportunities for employment. Given the demand, it seems a welcome benefit to all. Gaia help us, next thing you know those XY’s will be cutting women’s hair … oh, wait.
I remain equally happy.
ETA @Botsplainer: So acrid for so early on a Monday, sheesh. Too much effort.
JPL
In the state of GA, you are now required to bring your birth certificate and your marriage license, if your name doesn’t match the name on your birth certificate, to renew your license. The same is required for voter id. If I had a daughter, I’d encourage her to keep her birth name.
A Humble Lurker
@Botsplainer:
Because God forbid women do something without men.
Ash Can
@BruceFromOhio: There will always be problems with one-size-fits-all societal analysis such as this, but there’s still value in raising the question due to the vigilance that must still be exercised on the women’s-rights front. It may or may not ultimately be the right question, but suspicion is necessary.
And yes, Botsplainer’s comments are rather, uh, revealing, aren’t they?
gene108
@fuckwit:
I think the whole rant you linked starts off from a faulty premise and doesn’t get much better.
I personally believe 90% or more of the shit heterosexual women do to look good is to impress other heterosexual women. It’s not about some sort of “closet lesbian” thing, it’s just that women notice shit that men do not and women realize other women will notice it and therefore gossip about those things.
Fake eyelashes, eyelash makeup, eyeliner, eyebrow shaping and so much else goes utterly unnoticed by men, but women do notice the thickness of eyelashes on both men and women for whatever reason.
The premise gets worse:
The Hair Club for Men, Rogaine, Just for Men* and bunch of other shit would not exist in society, if men didn’t give a damn about their appearance. Men may not give the outward appearance of caring about appearance like women, but it doesn’t mean men aren’t vain in their own way.
Also, too beard growth in adult men makes having any facial make-up really, really logistically impossible. Though men compensate by finding ways to style beards to improve their appearance to feel better about themselves.
The point that women tend not to stick up for each other gets undermined by the assumption that men are some sort of “hypermasculine” alpha-type aggressive set and any guy, who is not alpha-male aggressive can be shamed into being alpha-male aggressive. The fact not every guy wants power, wants to be in charge and does things for other reasons is totally glossed over.
*Just for Men is some seriously toxic shit. If you have an allergic reaction to it, you can have permanent disfigurement, yet millions of men use it to mask the grey in their beards and hair.
Betty Cracker
@Botsplainer: Annoying, isn’t it? Just like when people of color insist that maybe they have more insight on racial discrimination issues than white people of good will — the nerve!
Botsplainer
@A Humble Lurker:
Ironic you should say that. Back in the mid 80s, I tumbled across a law review article in a mainstream journal penned by MacKinnon (perhaps co-authored by that obnoxious toad Andrea Dworkin). This article was laughable – one of her stated premises was that gay male sex was both patriarchist and anti-feminist because it deprived women of their ability to give assent to to the male sexual act.
Basically, there is a female version of the He Man Wimmen Haters Club, and it wound up running the ideological arm of the movement.
Equal rights are for everybody.
Basically, what it all comes down to is that everything touched by proto-firebaggers turned to shit.
Nicole
@gene108:
Virtually every male actor who has ever done film or TV work would beg to differ. Including my actor husband who has a permanent Homer Simpson.
Botsplainer
@Betty Cracker:
I never noticed MLK saying “keep quiet, we’re strong and don’t need your support”.
gene108
@Nicole:
Hadn’t thought about actors.
So how do these men keep their make-up on all day and not have the “five o’clock shadow” interfere with the make-up?
EDIT: I’m just thinking about what women do for make-up, with regards to foundation, blush, etc. and at some point by evening men will have hair sprouting on their cheeks, if they shaved in the morning. Or maybe stage make-up is different? I really do not know.
Baud
@Botsplainer:
Larry Craig was just taking a stand against feminism!
Death Panel Truck
The Soviet Union launched a woman into space twenty years before the U.S., but somehow when we did it, it was a big deal and a victory for equality.
Botsplainer
@JPL:
That’s exactly what we advised ours to do.
The Red Pen
@Baud:
He is a Republican.
Rumor has it that David Vitter paid his prostitutes only 70% of what Ted Haggard paid his!
Betty Cracker
@Botsplainer: Maybe you shouldn’t paint with such a broad brush? “Women’s rights activists” =/= Andrea Dworkin. Who is dead, by the way.
Yes, there are obnoxious extremists in any movement. But it’s perfectly legit for women to want to tell their own story on their own terms.
Baud
@Death Panel Truck:
And it was. Being first in the world isn’t the only important thing there is.
Botsplainer
@Baud:
Clearly, any woman who affirms the rights of gay men to engage in sexual relations with one another or to marry is merely a tool of the patriarchy.
Fight the Power!
Death Panel Truck
@Baud:
No, it wasn’t. Twenty years. We should have been an example to them; instead they did it, and it made NASA sick. Land of the free my ass.
Botsplainer
@Betty Cracker:
But when those obnoxious, exclusionary extremists are allowed to grab the reins and render the movement startlingly ineffective, would you agree that it is a problem?
How well has NARAL been doing lately?
Baud
@Death Panel Truck:
Twenty years isn’t an argument against the importance of spreading gender equality in the US. Kudos to the USSR for getting there first, but other events ate important also.
Botsplainer
@The Red Pen:
The day just started, and you win.
Bobby Thomson
In the open thread spirit, this bullshit about UN inspections in Syria being “too late” to detect chemical weapons use is like 2003 all over again. I don’t see any reason for the world to rush into action unless and until they have damning proof. It’s not like there are good guys in this fight, or any plan for winning peace after blowing everything up. There’s certainly no reason for the U.S. to do anything unilaterally. The only reason to do anything would be if it were clear to all objective parties, based on publicly available evidence, that chemical weapons were used. If that were the case, doing nothing would be tantamount to accepting that nation states are free to use chemical weapons. The people in the White House who leaked that we don’t doubt chemical weapons were used are essentially trying to force a military response by placing us in that box. Someone doesn’t want to waste a crisis.
It seems pretty transparent to me, and scary that none of the usual idiots ever learn anything.
Betty Cracker
@Botsplainer: I think NARAL is fighting the good fight, and I was glad when they chose to endorse then-Senator Obama in 2008 (which touched off a huge controversy when they were accused of snubbing Hillary Clinton). I think the organization’s president has been a good leader of a number of progressive causes and is hardly an “exclusionary extremist.” As for how abortion rights are faring, about as badly as voting rights under wingnut extremist state legislatures. I blame the wingnuts, not the activists who are trying to beat them back. YMMV.
PurpleGirl
@Botsplainer: I believe Stokely Carmichael was not too supportive of women’s rights.
And NARAL wasn’t doing too well because they decided sometime in late 80s or early 90s that the national organization would try to find common ground with the anti-abortionists. If as BC says they now are, that’s good because I felt seriously betrayed by them at one time.
Baud
@PurpleGirl:
Oh. I didn’t know about that. What kind of common ground were they thinking about?
Death Panel Truck
@Baud: From Sally Ride’s Wikipedia page:
Valentina Tereshkova logged more space time in her 1963 Vostok 6 flight than all of the Mercury astronauts combined. Somehow I doubt she was subjected to the ugly sexism Ride had to face. The USSR was eager to send a woman into space. But here in America we pay lip service to the concept of equality. I can see maybe waiting a few years before including women, but two decades?
NotMax
@Bobby Thompson
First, I’m not suggesting exoneration of the government of Syria; suspicion naturally primarily rests there.
However, among the ever shifting gains and losses of territory, multiple defections and factional splintering, who has access to and/or operational control over the use of at least some chemical agents is not an open and shut case.
Botsplainer
@PurpleGirl:
MLK succeeded due to being normal, moderate and mainstream. Had he not led, it all would have taken an ugly turn.
Just like Dworkin testifying in support of the Meese Commission.
Don’t forget 30 years of failed messaging. Three decades of “My Body, My Choice” writes off half the population in ways that “there are some decisions into which government may not intrude because they are so private” does not.
Baud
@Death Panel Truck:
And I don’t disagree that the U.S. wrongly lagged behind. What I disagreed with was your original point that
No matter how long it took for us to get it right, it was a big deal and a victory for equality that we started to do so.
Ben Cisco
OT, but NC small business owners are shocked (SHOCKED I TELL YOU!!) to discover that the “business-friendly” NCGOP policies don’t include them.
Ash Can
@Botsplainer: The current vote-suppression push isn’t Louis Farrakhan’s fault, and the current war on women isn’t the fault of Gloria Steinem or whatever “extremists” you think exist. If anything, the women’s rights movement needs to get a lot more “radical” and start pushing back against what’s been happening. Groups such as NARAL fell off the radar screen because they’ve been playing too nice. The leaders of the women’s rights movement in the 60s and 70s hurt a lot of people’s poor delicate feelings, and in doing so were far more effective in pushing our society and its laws forward than the more mainstream, complacent version of feminism we have today. We’ve been taking too much for granted, and we’re paying a hefty price for it.
rikyrah
Young black men energized by 50th anniversary march
by Todd Johnson | August 25, 2013 at 11:45 AM
Chicago teenager Terrence Riley didn’t plan to attend the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington Saturday, but his grandmother insisted he come.
She’s pretty old and it meant a lot to her because she marched [back in 1963],” said Riley, 17. “She really wanted me to be a part of it and my [younger] brother, but we weren’t really exactly excited.”
Riley’s indifference to the event changed quickly, however. He admitted he was inspired by the “passion” of several speakers and the overall atmosphere.
Riley was among tens of thousands of people who gathered to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
TheGrio.com asked several young African-American men to reflect on the day’s events and share how the anniversary is relevant to their lives in 2013. Responses ranged from stories of pride and appreciation to calls for more action and participation from young people in civil rights issues.
Engaging older generations for advice
Matt Williams is part of the Office of Diversity and Inclusion at Wake Forest University. Williams said participating in the 50th anniversary events in DC was a way for him to show older generations his appreciation for their sacrifices.
“So much has happened since the [March on Washington] in 1963,” said Williams, who graduated from Wake Forest in 2009. “But there is so much more to do in terms of justice in America…creating a fair and equal playing field for everyone to sort of be their whole self and sort of get to the larger issues that are affecting us all.”
http://thegrio.com/2013/08/25/young-black-men-energized-by-50th-anniversary-march/
Botsplainer
@Ash Can:
*guffaw*
Yup, more firebaggerism! That’ll teach them!
Instead of focusing on equality of opportunity in everything and equal value for equal work, they went off into the weeds on idiot notions of theories of patriarchy and Marx as they apply to an anti-feminist state. And you want to see a double down on a demonstrably failed strategy?
rikyrah
Ted Cruz Is Psychotic
Posted on August 25, 2013 at 4:59 pm by Mr. Brink
Oh, the face of defeat really does have a pretty mouth sometimes.
In an interview today on CNN‘s State Of The Union with slumlord/host Candy Crowley, Senator Ted Cruz(R-TX), Mr. Defund Obamacare Or Else Great Harm Will Come To You! told America that he intends to actually assist his misguided, healthcare-seeking constituents in signing up for the federal healthcare insurance exchange, set to begin open enrollment October 1st. So, by the state of Texas’s actions in publicly refusing expansion of Medicaid, as called for in the Affordable Care Act, on the grounds that the government has no business in their healthcare business– It appears that Texas, in particular, is secretly leaving pies on Sheriff Bart’s windowsill to help manage their twisted, states’ rights affairs.
Fooling all of the people all of the time can become a grind, but this is the problem with only reading headlines. On paper, Ted Cruz sounds like he’s concerned and will do anything he can to help people, saying,
“I am honored to represent 26 million Texans,” he said, “and dealing with the government is inherently frustrating, it’s inherently confusing and one of the things our office takes very seriously is trying to help Americans deal with the government.”
Oh, sure. He’s a helper on paper, maybe in bipartisan headlines, maybe even a traitor in some parts, but if you go to the tape, all of that reliable GOP fake sincerity and concern trolling is bolstered by Ted Cruz’s visibly uncomfortable body language, bordering on polite hostility. And, with that polished sheen of Southern-transplant condescension enjoyed by millions of compassionate conservative sociopaths everywhere, Obamacare is saved!
If the word empathy has any life left in it, Ted Cruz is now pissing arsenic into it’s ocular cavity. They’ve basically turned the idea of empathy and compassion into a dog whistle, or selling point, for those who refuse to believe that the GOP is actually this psychotic
http://bobcesca.thedailybanter.com/blog-archives/2013/08/ted-cruz-is-psychotic.html
rikyrah
Martin Luther King Was A Liberal Progressive Who Favored Left Wing Causes & Don’t You Forget It
By Oliver Willis · August 23,2013
As we head towards the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, it is worth pausing for a second to solidly stake out the fact that Martin Luther King Jr. was a man of the left.
For years the right has sought to either de-politicize Rev. King or expunge his leftist sentiment from the public record. We are told time and again that King was somehow beyond ideology and that his quest for civil rights and justice didn’t deal in politics.
Bull.
Rev. King was a liberal. A dyed in the wool liberal. He was on the left. He favored liberal solutions and liberal policies. He wasn’t a centrist, moderate, on the center-left or God forbid anywhere near the right. HE WAS A LIBERAL.
The first, and worst counterargument to King’s liberalism often relies on conservatives assuming that people are either stupid, ignorant or unwilling to challenge their perversion of history. They claim that since the most vehement of opposition to King was often rooted in the Democratic party, while he had support in the Republican party, as proof that he was on the right.
This is absurd because it pretends that both parties occupied the same positions on the left-right spectrum in 1963 that they do today. In fact, as anyone who has ever cracked open a history book understands, the Democrats had a contingent of southern racists while the Republicans had northeastern liberals.
It just happens that it was the movement led by Rev. King and others that helped to remake the two parties. Lyndon Johnson – a Democrat – signed the Civil Rights Act into law, and the racist Dixiecrats soon found themselves on the outside of the party. Similarly, the conservative takeover of the Republican Party – liberal Rockefeller lost the nomination in favor of Goldwater – moved that party to the right. Soon the Dixiecrats found a resting place in the GOP while liberals became a part of the Democratic Party.
But back to King.
http://thedailybanter.com/2013/08/martin-luther-king-was-a-liberal-progressive-who-favored-left-wing-causes-dont-you-forget-it/
Bobby Thomson
@NotMax: All the more reason to chill the fuck out.
Nicole
@gene108:
Women touch up their makeup throughout the day; men could do the same. Foundation is about improving the appearance of your skin’s texture and covering up flaws like uneven coloring and acne scars. The five o’clock shadow could poke right through without looking odd at all.
While stage makeup is often heavier (so the audience can see the actors’ features from a distance), film and TV uses the same makeup you can buy in stores.
Betty Cracker
@Botsplainer:
Talk about guffaw-worthy! MLK was considered by many to be a radical commie, and it kinda took an “ugly turn” when someone assassinated him, no? Jesus.
Any movement worth its salt attracts people from across the spectrum. You might find MLK more nice and cuddly than Stokely Carmichael and Malcolm X, but all three were important figures who made major contributions to the movement.
Andrea Dworkin, being dead and all, isn’t really an influential figure in current feminist thought. Are there extremists? Sure. But most actual feminist leaders ARE focused on equal opportunity and equal pay, etc. If some of the more radical types give you a screaming case of butthurt, well, don’t listen to them. But to act like they’re running Feminism Inc. and ruining everything for everybody is bullshit.
rikyrah
‘We do not have the votes right now’
By Steve Benen
Mon Aug 26, 2013 8:00 AM EDT
Proponents of the Republican government-shutdown scheme generally express nothing but optimism — their support is growing, they say, and the effort continues apace.
There is, however, ample reason to believe the GOP is moving further away from actually executing the shutdown plan.
Late last week, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), the #4 member of the House Republican leadership, dismissed the scheme, saying it’s “probably not realistic.” Around the same time, Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.) stressed his hatred for the Affordable Care Act, but nevertheless added that his party should invest its energies elsewhere.
Yesterday, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), one of the key ringleaders of the shutdown scheme, conceded, “We do not have the votes right now.”
So, it’s over, right? Not quite yet.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/08/26/20195733-we-do-not-have-the-votes-right-now?lite
rikyrah
A rare defeat for the religious right in Alabama
By Steve Benen
Mon Aug 26, 2013 9:19 AM EDT.
Dissent on culture-war issues is rarely tolerated within the Republican Party. A few months ago, for example, the chair of the Illinois Republican Party was forced to step down for having the audacity to say gay Americans should be able to allowed to get married.
In Alabama, where dissent among Republicans on social conservatism is even less common, a similar fight has brewed in recent weeks and was resolved over the weekend. The outcome was not altogether expected.
At the heart of the controversy is Alabama College Republicans Chairwoman Stephanie Petelos, who praised the Supreme Court’s ruling striking down the Defense of Marriage Act on Facebook. Soon after, she told a local news outlet she supports marriage equality because “we’re governed by the constitution and not the Bible.”
The comments were not well received within the Alabama GOP. State Republican officials quickly began the process of writing new bylaws that would require all steering committee members to support the party’s positions as outlined in the national platform. Those who publicly disagree would be removed from their leadership posts.
On Saturday, in a surprising turn of events, efforts to punish Petelos fell short.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/08/26/20196811-a-rare-defeat-for-the-religious-right-in-alabama?lite
Steeplejack
@Bobby Thomson:
I’m not arguing your larger point—about the rush and pressure for the U.S. to “do something” in Syria—but it seems to be clear that chemical weapons have been used. Doctors Without Borders reported that more than 3,000 people showed up at aid stations and hospitals on the same morning with symptoms consistent with nerve-gas poisoning. That’s not just the flu going around.
NotMax
@Nicole
The still ongoing evolution of TV make-up is sort of interesting as a way to track technological advances.
In the earliest days of TV, black lipstick and green make-up were the norm, as the intense lighting, cameras, and equipment rendered those as ‘normal’ coloration and shading when watched on the screen. Lighter and white make-up was verboten, as they could cause hot or burn spots on the very expensive camera tubes.
Now, with HDTV, make-up is undergoing another transition, to soften or eliminate the experience of viewers being bombarded by each and every pore of a face plastered on a 60-inch screen, for example.
Cacti
@Botsplainer:
By which I would guess that the racism and xenophobia of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton would be thoroughly glossed over.
Nicole
@NotMax:
True- airbrushing makeup on is becoming more common, in order to improve the way the skin looks. HD is absolutely merciless.
Drexciya
It would be nice if there were some acknowledgment that the kind of feminism being celebrated in that video and in that blockquote wasn’t on behalf of women generally, but on behalf of a subset of upper/middle class white women who failed to see and failed to organize around gendered issues beyond the ethnically tinged lens of their own concerns. It was a feminism that drew its power from the casual erasure of black experiences and remained deaf to the power dynamics that made them argue for white female suffrage while terrorism was being applied against a whole race to stop them from voting and white female employment while refusing to see their already-employed black maids and black nannies as having concerns and risks (often personal, often sexual) that required considerably more attention.
I mention this not just to add a corrective to an easily dismissed history, but to offer a reminder that those dynamics are continually replicated within mainstream feminism and run the risk of being replicated here. Modern feminist media (from Feministe, to xoJane, to Jezebel and so on) and modern feminist figures (like Amanda Marcotte, Jessica Valenti, Jill Filipovic and Sady Doyle) essentially codified their success by the abusive and systemic silencing of POC female voices when they demanded an intersectional analysis of feminism that incorporated POC interests and uniquely POC concerns. It would be a better celebration of “equality” to remember those like brownfemipower, Flavia Dzodan, Karnythia, Blackamazon, etc that give voice to those concerns and to better prioritize consciously intersectional thinking in our analysis of what qualifies as “good” for feminism and for the broader public.
White success on white terms enjoyed almost exclusively by white people is not success. It’s white supremacy. Your “equality” isn’t equal if all parties aren’t equally benefiting and aren’t equally represented.
askew
@gene108:
There was a great HBO movie about women’s suffrage that aired years ago with Hillary Swank called Iron Jawed Angels. I do agree that women’s rights doesn’t get the attention that other movements get in Hollywood though. That is due to the fact that most of the producers in Hollywood are men and it is incredibly difficult to get any movie or mini-series made that center on women. Hollywood has a huge sexism problem unfortunately .
lojasmo
@fuckwit:
As a (male) nurse, from my perspective, nursing is not powerful at all.
schrodinger's cat
Gail Collins and Krugman are the only two columnists who consistently write op-eds that I like to read.
Although MoDo’s column this Sunday was good too.
schrodinger's cat
@fuckwit:
Written by a man I presume, I glanced through it quickly, seems deeply misogynistic.
rikyrah
@Drexciya:
AMEN
AMEN
AMEN
Black women have always worked outside of the home..
ever since the first one was brought over on the slave ships.
Shakezula
What’s frustrating is the fact it is never enough to gain a right, you have to perform regular maintenance or some assholes will smash it up. People have joked for a while about the Right wishing to repeal that pesky 19th Am. But when you look what they’re doing to keep minorities and the poor from voting it doesn’t seem so funny any more. And did I think we’d be seeing a pitched battle over reproductive rights 15 years ago? I did not, and I’m pretty pessimistic.
@NotMax: Boo hoo.
rikyrah
How not to defend voter suppression in North Carolina
By Steve Benen
Mon Aug 26, 2013 10:10 AM EDT
Two weeks after North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) approved the most sweeping voter-suppression law seen in the United States in a generation, the political world is taking note of the disaster in growing numbers. Last week, former Secretary of State Colin Powell condemned the state’s new voting restrictions, and yesterday, pundit Cokie Roberts said, “[W]hat’s going on about voting rights is downright evil.”
But don’t worry, the Eagle Forum’s Phyllis Schlafly, a prominent leader of the religious right movement for decades, has a new defense. In a WorldNetDaily column, the right-wing activist offered an unexpected explanation of why some of North Carolina’s new restrictions are worthwhile.
Have you ever heard a political figure accidentally read stage direction, unaware that it’s not supposed to repeated out loud? This is what Schlafly’s published column reminds me of.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/08/26/20197189-how-not-to-defend-voter-suppression-in-north-carolina?lite
Elizabelle
RIP Muriel Siebert, first woman to buy a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, in 1967.
I remember reading about Ms. Siebert in Ms. magazine, in my high school library, years later.
She was a pioneer. Ran for the Republican Senate nomination from NY too (Daniel Patrick Moynihan won the seat).
Jane2
@Botsplainer: You sound like you’re stuck in a 70s Womyn’s Studies university class. How would you deal with the current legislative assault on women?
beltane
@Drexciya: A couple of years ago, PBS aired a documentary about the events leading up to the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. One of the things that struck me most was the way in which the lower class, non-native born, female workers were regarded by the prominent feminists of the day, which was mostly with hostility. The women’s rights leaders were appalled that the female strikers were being manhandled by the police and other paid goons of the factory owners, but eventually turned on the workers due to their demands to unionize and generally obtain better working conditions. At the end of the day, the sympathies of the feminists lay with their economic class and not with their gender, which is not terribly surprising once you realize that humans tend to be loyal to their tribe rather than to “others” who happen to have similar genitalia.
Interrobang
@Drexciya: OFFS, I’m getting so sick of this argument. Where exactly were the 60s and early 70s feminists supposed to get entree into the world of issues surrounding WOCs in a basically still-segregated society? Seriously. Concrete answers, please.
I’m legitimately curious as to how you think they could or should have accomplished this, because the way I see it, they likely wouldn’t have been permitted in, on the grounds that they were white do-gooders and therefore probably not trustworthy. Secondly, if they had managed to do anything, people like you who are now screaming about how white middle-class women ignore the issues of women of colour would now be screaming about how appropriative and colonist it was for those white feminists to go into that movement. (Yes, it would have been that no-win scenario, be honest.)
Thirdly, you work on what you know. White feminists tend to work on issues that affect white feminists for precisely the same reason that POCs tend to work on issues that affect POCs. (Duh.) I kind of thought the whole point of social justice work was that if everyone worked on what interested or was relevant to them, lots of stuff would get done. As it is, all I’m seeing these days is that a bunch of competing factions are yelling at each other demanding that everyone cater to everyone else at all times, and pretty much nothing is getting done, because everyone’s so busy making sure nobody who’s nominally on “our side” gets butthurt about anything, ever. Meanwhile, while we’re busy engaging in a circular firing squad, rather than just accepting that people can move toward the same goals in different ways and from different points of view and using different tactics, and not demanding artificial solidarity at all times, we’re losing our rights and the battle for the public consciousness. How many “make me a sandwich” jokes did you see this week?
The name of the movement is “feminism,” after all, w not “white-women-ought-to-clean-up-all-the-messes-white-men-makeism.” Fuck that shit.
Drexciya
Wow.
Drexciya
I’m sorry, let me attempt a different – but equally appropriate – response.
You’re not on my side. Don’t pretend that you are. We’re not allies, we’re not friends and not only will we never be, we never should be. You’re loyal to a vision of political progress that rests on the invisibility and marginalization of the interests and challenges of me and mine. Your success rests on my disadvantage. We may both vote Democratic, but never take that as a reason to propel the delusion that you’re actually interested in what’s best for me and mine instead of what’s best for a white-defined, white-beneficial, falsely universal “all.” Your loyalties were exposed the moment you thought a self-serving elision of collective white responsibility for racism was a reasonable topical tack.
In deemphasizing racism as a dynamic that warrants specific, proactive redress from the societally empowered, you’ve implicitly made the silent continuation and acceptance of racism and white supremacy a logical and morally defensible proposition if you’re white. That’s wonderful if that’s true for you. Unfortunately, that’s not true for everyone else. Condescendingly dismissing the trade-offs of prioritizing white supremacy innocuously presented as white, universal “interests” is exactly the kind of analysis that makes the broader and largely white progressive blogosphere moan about abstractions while maintaining a distant silence about the actively and directly disadvantaged.
Also, I’m not remotely interested in making your argument for you. You’ve constructed a world where whiteness and access to whiteness didn’t qualify as social currency, regardless of gender. You’ve crafted a reality where white women – who directed black servants, lived on plantations, attended lynchings and were directly responsible for some of them and financially benefited from having white fathers, white brothers and white husbands – held no personal power and no personal agency for its propagation. Your objections rest on fiction. And you want me to address them seriously? You want me to say that only black people should be in a supposed “no-win situation?”
I refuse.
gene108
@Ben Cisco:
From the article. The math right there tells it all about what the priorities of Republicans are.
gene108
@Nicole:
I think despite my ignorance of actors and make-up, the point I was trying to make is men can be just as vain as women about their appearance and spend money on products to improve their appearance, even though men do not wear eyeshadow.
Betty Cracker
@gene108: That may be true, particularly for individual men, but to say that men in general are as judged by their appearance as women would be incredibly, demonstrably inaccurate. I know you didn’t say that; just wanted to note the clarification.
rikyrah
@Drexciya:
Amen
kc
@Botsplainer:
Probably because of guys like you.
LanceThruster
A Humble Lurker
@Betty Cracker:
This.