ERA

Russell Shaw calls for progressives to unite around whatever Democratic Party nominee for president:

I look at this past week's 5-4 Supreme Court vote against "partial birth abortion." Then I hold up the ages of liberal Justices John Paul Stevens (87), and an increasingly feeble Ruth Bader Ginsburg (74) against the actuarial tables.

I just pray these two are able to serve on the Court until that hopefully blessed morning of January 20, 2009.

At Noon on that day, a Democrat will- from my mouse to the Goddess' ears- take the Oath.

I'd love for the oath-taker to be Al Gore, or John Edwards, or Bill Richardson. But if it comes down to saving Roe, I'd settle for Hillary. With more campaign funds than her Democratic opponents, her nomination is likely. I can see where Obama will fade, Edwards may need to drop out, and Gore will stay out.

At this point in time, though, I can see a scenario that causes ideological purists on our side of the fence to do something stupid that will cause Hillary to fall short, and thus, pave the path for another anti-choice, Justice-appointng [sic] Republican to get into the White House.

Despite the fact that Russell Shaw is echoing radical right-wing (as well as Markos Moulitsas) talking points about "ideological purity" -- a Rovian expression if I ever heard one -- I can see his point. Just this morning, I was thinking about how any of the top four -- Obama, Edwards, Richardson or even Clinton -- would get my vote. And while I know not nearly enough to choose any one above the others, at this point, my sense is that one of them would suffice for me come November next year.

Making that decision so much easier is the fact that the Republicans have so far offered up boobs, bigots and bobbies. Given the radical and, yes, misogynist and, yes again, racist and, yes, obviously, homophobic values at the core of the right wing, I don't see myself voting for any Republican for president any time soon. Add in their modern penchant for fascistic governmental control over individuals -- making the phrase "the party of Goldwater" an oxymoronic joke -- and I don't see myself voting Republican in my lifetime.

However, Congress is a different matter. Do we continue to vote for pro-forced-pregnancy Democrats? How do we, as progressives, in good conscience cast our lot with men (yes once more, I'm afraid) who consider women's right to privacy to be non-existent, women's medical choices to be controlled by politicians, women's health to be a distraction, women's lives to be important only when not distracting from other interests, and women's bodies to be, ultimately, Property of the U.S. Government?

I wonder how many Democratic and independent voters even realize that their Democratic Senator(s) and/or Representative is an advocate of forced pregnancy.

The question is pertinent right now, pre-primaries, while we look at what kind of future we want to forge in the can't-come-soon-enough post-Bush America. Now is the time to ask the questions. Now is the time to choose. Now is the time to push for the progressives that will defend privacy and equal rights and civil rights and human rights for everyone, not just the ruling men who look upon the rest of us as "peasants."

It's not an easy thing, when the Democratic Party, whose vague favoring of progressive values stands out like a monument to all things noble and just when compared with the venal depravity that describes the power centers of the GOP, has such a slim and weak hold upon Congress.

It's all the more difficult when you consider that men claiming progressive values have historically dismissed our alarms about the Handmaid trends happening in our politics -- our politics. And it sure as heck doesn't help that ignorance and willful ignorance on the part of ostensibly well-intentioned men when it comes to issues women face continue.

The demographics are with us, though. More GOP seats in the Senate are up for election next year. Americans in general are suspicious of an overly invasive Government. And, while meaningful statistics are lacking (at least from what I can tell), based on anecdotal evidence there are quite a number of so-called "pro-life" Americans who oppose abortion until the issue comes home to roost in their own families, in their own lives.

So what's it going to be, boys? When you throw women's lives into the mix, does women's equality count as "important shit"?

One of the main conservative leaders who fought successfully to scare politicians away from the Equal Rights Amendment has now revealed some of her underlying thinking, including -- incredibly -- the notion that husbands have carte blanche when it comes to raping their wives.

"By getting married, the woman has consented to sex, and I don't think you can call it rape," she said.

That's right, honey. Say "I do" and open your legs 'till death do you part.

She also seems to be oblivious to the changing world around her.

One came when Schlafly asserted women should not be permitted to do jobs traditionally held by men, such as firefighter, soldier or construction worker, because of their "inherent physical inferiority."

"Women in combat are a hazard to other people around them," she said. "They aren't tall enough to see out of the trucks, they're not strong enough to carry their buddy off the battlefield if he's wounded, and they can't bark out orders loudly enough for everyone to hear."

Never mind that women are taller and stronger today than before, thanks to less socially imposed norms of yore, such as the undernourishment of girls and the frowning on women participating in sports.

Besides, making grandiose generalizations based on sex when it comes to who's permitted to do what is a ridiculous claim, and politically is more in line with fascism than the old-line Goldwater conservatism that espouses small government and leaving people alone.

In summary, it seems that the woman who tried to claim that feminism was a victim mindset has completely swallowed whole a pathologically victim-oriented view of the world, where women are soooooo inferior that we should all just shut up, cook dinner and get on our backs for men.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed ...

Men? All men are created equal? What about women?

In elementary school we learned that "men" meant "both men and women," and for a while we bought that ... until the Women's Movement. Unexamined sexism allowed us to say "doctor, he" and "nurse, she," and how language became a tool of control. A lot of time was spent in the 1970s removing sexist preconceptions from the language. The language lost some poetry as a result, but women gained some rights.

But are the high flowing words of the American Declaration of Independence only an ideal? The Soviets came to that conclusion about their own system. Pure Communism was an ideal, but practicality prevented it and The USSR renounced Communism ... at least officially and in large part.

Perhaps the struggle of the last 30 years in the Women's Movement has led us in the United States to the same de facto conclusion about principles alluded to in the Declaration of Independence.

Perhaps most people - rightly or wrongly - believe that the biological difference between men and women are so different, that there never can be true equality. And men, who on the surface would seem to gain most from keeping women "not equal," are not the only culprits. Perhaps the majority of women agree.

And yet all around, people want to have their cake and it it too. On the one hand, women are told in some states that once they are impregnated, they must carry the baby to term - as we saw in the recent publicity over the South Dakota Law. A woman does not have the right to choose.

In another case, one in the UK, a man has asked that the eggs he fertilized be destroyed. The woman wants to bear the children, but the man - claiming "choice" - is asserting his right to choose. Judges will eventually decide.

Indeed, these are different legal jurisdictions, but the unspoken assumption is so very much ingrained that it is never debated or discussed. People believe there are two categories of people ... despite the Declaration and elementary school English ... that say that men and women are not equal.

Men are equal as a class. Women are equal as a class. People will subscribe to that and the courts can thrash that out when one group of men gains at the expense of another. Same with women. But, what happens tacitly is that men and women are not equal and society seems to run on that assumption.

The abortion debate at one moment runs on the argument of equality, then on the argument of inequality - each side using both arguments to make its point. The Women's Rights Movement has been marginalized and maneuvered into the Reproductive Rights Movement - a long way away from what the women of the Women's Liberation Movement were talking about in the 1960s and 1970s.

Feminists of the 1960s and 1970s almost managed to get the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) passed. This would have made our elementary school English teachers' assertions correct; that the word "men" means "men and women" in the context of rights.

However, as we left the barricades and entered corporate and marital life and a host of 30-something realities, equality suddenly did not look the same as it did when we were idealistic students and fresh graduates. Maybe our mothers knew something we didn't. Maybe institutionalized sexism was so pervasive and the institutions so fundamentally "male," that we really did not want that sort of equality. A law, even a Constitutional Amendment, was not going to get us into the Old Boys Network, nor were we going to let men into the International Women's Grapevine. In fact, what would that look like? We were stumped.

At we hit 30-something, we started to get serious about having babies. Even lesbians were having children, and Reproductive Rights trumped most of the other demands, and maybe an Equal Rights Amendment wasn't such a good idea - not after Prince Charming proved not-charming, and possibly ran off with someone else, leaving us with the pregnancies and the brood. Shouting out "equality," he demanded alimony, or at least insisted he did not have to pay much in child support since we women now had access to cool careers and could make do - never mind we put off childbearing for some additional years - until maybe we could no longer conceive.

The differences between men and women became more clear as time wore on and we wondered if our mothers hadn't gotten it "right," after all, and suddenly Phyllis Schlafly, for all her insipid rhetoric and hypocrisy, began to make a sort of perverse sense. Sexism was so ingrained in the culture that if the ERA got passed, men would use it when it suited them, while maintaining business-as-usual the rest of the time.

We saw it with our husbands. We both had power careers, but guess who always ended up doing the dishes? Well, it wasn't him. Granted, men got better at helping around the house and in a number of other realms, but men did not change at a fundamental level nor has including women markedly changed institutions. Most of the women who have made it have not transformed the institution. The institution has transformed them, and it is hardly something most of us envisioned, nor would we have wanted to become like them.

People despise Hillary and/or Condi, yet they are the blue and red exponents of the 1960s/1970s and are not what we had in mind when we asked for Constitutionally guaranteed equality.

The gains made by the Second Wave of Feminism have been masterfully utilized by these young women - and fact boys have been raised (by us!) to be less overtly sexist has helped - and things have gotten better in one sense, so much so that Women's Rights have fallen of the radar, altogether. They're in there with "save the Spotted Owls" on the list of the social agenda.

But it is not the fault of the men or even the women. Women have defected from the Progressives and the Progressives have returned the favor and dropped much of the pro-woman and pro-choice language from their platforms.

Some of the political bloggers say we should vote Democrat, regardless. Some say that a third party is a pipe dream.

As for me, I'm going to vote for every woman I can. If there are two women in the race, I'll vote for the more Progressive one.

Is this a flawed concept? No more flawed than voting for a Democrat, just because he is a Democrat.

Right now, women are in largely male governing institutions such as government and large corporations. There are a few who have risen to the top - Hillary and Condi, as stated earlier - but they are products of institutions shaped primarily by men and whose male traditions are longstanding. What woman can stand in the face of that? Second Wave Feminists know all about being the only-woman-in-the-group. We recall how isolating it was and that there were no role models.

Later, younger women came in and they did not experience this same isolation, nor did they go through quite the trial by fire - and that is good they were spared that. And yet, if there were more women - red, blue, green, whatever - the women would start to think about what it would mean to be equal and to restructure institutions that are not based on the Old Boys Network.

I can't hate or blame Hillary or Condi for who and what they are having emerged from that morass. They have survived in a world which thinks (right down to the grass roots - blue grass and red grass) that men and women are simply not equal.

However, if there were more women in all positions of leadership, over time the women would get it right - just as we do when we meet as women in our own gatherings. We have divisions and don't all speak with the same voice, but when we don't have men looking over our shoulders and there aren't men to have to cater to, the dynamic is different - even in the face of differences.

So that is why in the next election, I will vote for the women, then for progressives. Finally Democrats.

Equality will not happen until women are represented in half the institutions - and then they will work their magic.

My only regret is that it may take another century.

But it has, at least, begun.

Equality under the law surely is an American value. Who, if they had the facts, would support a law that results in subjugation? Perhaps the oppressor might vote for such a law, but not those who are disadvantaged by the law. Yet, in the United States, women have not yet had the political will to pass the Equal Rights Amendment. Its language is simple.

Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.

It outlaws sexism.

And yet, the amendment is still not part of the United States Constitution.

Women are governed by a set of laws that have evolved over time, which stem from issues around human reproduction. The sexual organ difference between men and women has led to two sets of laws and rights.

The megablogs, such as Daily Kos, Boomantribune, and mydd, are advancing an argument that the issue of women's reproductive rights is not important, and that if a Democrat wants to restrict a woman's rights, that is okay since women's reproductive rights are not as important as electing a certain slate of candidates.

If I chose to support another candidate, who supports women's reproductive rights, but who is not of the "correct" slate of candidates, I risk being accused of being a traitor and deserter of the cause. But what cause, pray tell?

Why would I care about a candidate who doesn't care about me? It's as simple as that and the machinations of megablogs like Daily Kos, Boomantribune, and mydd, come off as flummery - I am urged to vote against my own interests because it is in my interests. Huh?

The Democrats, of late, have abandoned women's rights as an issue as the Democrats swing ever rightward. I ask myself, why should I join this made race to nowhere, whose only promise is oblivion? Either way, the Democrats will lose. The megblogs tell us there will be few Democrats in power; fewer Democratic bodies in Congress. But that's one price I am not going to pay, no matter how many elections it might win, for in the end, the Democrats will have struck a bargain to win an election, only to find out that they have sold their souls.

For a week, just about all we've heard about is Dick Cheney's "simple hunting accident," and how the victim was a long-time Republican fundraiser, and the attempted White House cover-up, and his beer(s?) at lunch and the yahoo truck-based hunting style, and the fact that the quail in this "hunting trip" were in fact caged and released only when the good ol' boys were ready with their guns to blow them to pieces (hey, the rulers are entitled to privileges, aren't they?), and all the other horrid details of this incident involving this hateful man. We heard his unemotional apology, delivered like a military policy statement on the right-wing's propaganda news channel.

Some analysts have even declared that Cheney's recklessness with firearms has boosted his stock with the macho gun-loving lizard-brain constituents of the Republican Party. (Sometimes the Daily Show is just prescient.)

But when it comes to long-term implications in the political realm, the bigger news story was Paul Hackett's withdrawal from the Ohio Democratic primary race for the Senate seat up this year -- and how he was apparently pressured out by none other than the big shots in the Democratic Party itself -- many of whom recruited him to run in the first place.

"For me, this is a second betrayal," Mr. Hackett said. "First, my government misused and mismanaged the military in Iraq, and now my own party is afraid to support candidates like me."

Since then, we've seen quite a lot of chest-thumping in the blogosphere, with an abundance of I-told-you-so's and offerings of revisionist history. ("We support Sherrod Brown. We have always supported Sherrod Brown.")

One example is yesterday's offering posted on Booman that comes close to accusing people who don't line up and vote for Democrats -- any and all Democrats, no matter what their political views or character flaws -- are, in effect, supporters of the Republicans. Never mind what kind of Democrats get elected. Never mind that politicians like Casey, whom the diarist supports, are to the right of Democrats like Ben Nelson and Ken Salazar, who've proven how unreliable they can be.

A cornerstone if this kind of political position is the unstated but clear-as-day strategy of co-opting modern-day, pseudo-conservative Republican positions and "values" so that the only change in Congress is with which party the wingnut in question is registered.

Maybe it's not all that foolish. Maybe it's quite clever. We're supposed to be fooled into thinking that buying into such a rightward push in the Democratic Party is actually in our interests. Their calling card is the Republican boogie man, which doesn't need much embellishment to be convincing. And then they toss out a few bones to the voters.

I believe that if you are registered to vote in Pennsylvania, and you do not vote for Bob Casey over Rick Santorum in the general election in November, then you support the privatization of Social Security (which Santorum favors and Casey opposes). I believe that if you don't vote for Bob Casey instead of Rick Santorum, then you support the K-Street Project, which Rick Santorum helps run. I believe that if you don't vote for Bob Casey instead of Rick Santorum, then you think that the minimum wage should only be increased as long as several million workers lose all of their protections nationwide. If you don't' vote for Bob Casey instead of Rick Santorum, then you support CAFTA, which Casey opposes and Santorum supports.

It's easy to offer such simplistic rhetoric. But let's set aside the self-righteousness of it and get to the logic: "Our misogynistic bastard is better than their misogynistic bastard."

This seems like a fool's strategy to me. If you become that which you abhor, how do you change back? If the Democratic Party is made even more of a faux-Republican party to obtain power, how would one change it into a progressive party? Where would be the mandate?

What all this party-insider grandstanding is based on is the unspoken and perhaps unexamined belief that neither party wants to address: Women have no right to have a voice in politics.

Every time you hear someone declare your interest in your rights to equal liberty, equal justice and equal protection under the law as your "pet cause" that fits your "single-issue voter" demands for "ideological purity," think about what they're really saying:

"Shut up, woman, and let us men deal with this! We'll get to your concerns later."

Chris Bowers, The Booman diarist mentioned above, probably does not believe he's a chauvinist or that he's blinded by male privilege from really seeing or hearing what women are doing and saying. (I think the jury is still out on Kos, who seems to be proudly anti-feminist.) But the fact that women are marginalized just for demanding equality in this country is very telling.

So as the bellowing gets louder, and the accusations that women's equal participation in all things political is only provisional and secondary to men's rule, remember this:

As long as it's left to men alone to pass judgment on whether women's rights should be respected, honored and protected as a minimum requirement for a truly egalitarian society, there will be no equality for women...

...and reproductive rights will always be a bargaining chip to be given away...

...and universal healthcare will be a lofty political plank with no credibility...

...and progressive values will suffer...

...because a non-inclusive "big tent" strategy will never turn on the regressive hand that feeds it.