I am disgusted and sickened by the expressed views of the religious among us when it comes to women's issues. These are coming mostly from men of a certain age, of course. They continue in the fine tradition of the Red Tent, where women are banished during the days of their "uncleanness" to quote the wonderful folk who bring you the great traditions of never sit in a chair where a woman has sat lest you become contaminated.
I'm talking, of course, of the religions coming out of the Near East, of which Christianity is part whether it wishes (it usually doesn't) to deny its participation. Judaism is an enthusiastic participant in the process of defining its manhood against the backdrop of the horror of what it might have been: having been born a woman. When the Jewish men give their thanks every day in prayer for not having been made a woman, any self-respecting woman ought to shudder.
It's not a huge jump from thanking god for providing a man with an external sex organ to looking down on women with horror and fear--and telling them to cover themselves up since desire for them is shameful and obviously a woman who shows an ankle or face is a temptress who must be stoned to death.
But is this just the Near East? I think not. Not after listening to the idiocy, paranoia, and plain bigotry of men--always men--who think they deserve to be voted in to represent us.
If it's "true" rape, one of our dimmest bulbs out of the Midwest says--the woman can choose not to get pregnant. Well, kangaroos can--but biology says that women can't. If there is sperm and there is contact, there she blows. He must have gone to the same schools that taught you would go blind if you masturbated. And he thinks he is qualified to pass laws for this nation? Only a man could believe so--no forgive me, I forget Michelle Bachman.
Then there's the bundle of joy who believes that a child conceived by rape is God's will. So the rapist was doing god's will when he forced himself on a woman who didn't want him? Why on earth, then, are we bothering to try Holmes for murders in the Aurora movie theatre? Wasn't he just doing god's will? Didn't god intend for those victims to die? By having any judicial system at all, aren't we going against god's will since he clearly intended for all this to happen? You can't just pick and choose where god chooses to insert himself--he's either in or he's not (no pun intended).
Plus--what about free will? St. Augustine argued pretty persuasively about this. Human beings have free will. They can choose to do good or do evil. So what about the free will of the rapist? He chose to be evil, but did his victim also have free will to accept his decision? It seems like there may be some free wills more free than others--and you can be sure it is not the woman's.
In my youth, I walked the picket lines for the National Organization of Women to protest the lack of legal abortion. I had friends who needed illegal abortions and they were risky and terrifying. I wanted to save the next generation from the horrors of what we saw. I wanted them to have the economic opportunities that were denied us. I fought the dominant hierarchy (male, of course) by competing and winning--I wanted to make it easier for the young women behind us. We all felt that way. We fought for a cause.
And now I watch in dismay as the next generation of women, lulled perhaps by the concessions we won for them, seem ready to let them erode. They do not realize that we older women were never able to kill the impulses that would limit women in future. It required us to pass the torch to other generations willing to value what we had done and to recognize that arrayed against us were the very fabric of society and the massed force of religious opinion.
To those women voting the conservative ticket, all I can say is as you give up the things we hoped to achieve for you, I hope you will give some little thought to the women who fought to give you the vote, those who fought to get you decent wages, and those of us who fought for your control over your own body.
Monday, November 5, 2012
Friday, November 2, 2012
A War Between Staff
Like everyone else, I am sick of these elections and just want them over. It's very hard to find something to write about that might be in any way useful to my primary intent: just get this beast over and done with. I have no interest in debating a set of political arguments that have become unmoored from anything approaching reason--I gave up writing about them a couple of months ago. I also have no interest in trying to ask the electorate to ask questions that go beyond the mere confirmation of their own prejudices or even pointing out my disgust with the politicians who find it rewarding to fan and ignorance.
Still, there is something to say. So let me launch into the nature of campaign staffs, which is something about which I have absolute first-hand knowledge.
I was assistant to the president of a major university system. That made me aide-de-camp, trouble-shooter, bottle washer, confidant, and booster all wrapped up into one. Think the staffs of Romney and Obama and you have my role. I was paid well, and I was good at it. But also think that there was a complete breakdown of any distance between the staff and our employer.
If my boss got a bruise, his staff bled That's how close we got and also how close he wanted it. If he said something stupid, we were on instant damage control. Ditto if he said something honest that was likely to give advantage to his opponent. We staff sat around agonizing over every perceived slight, every opposing point, every slight advantage--they all took on earth-shattering importance and had to be neutralized. We were so deeply involved that sometimes even our boss became like the enemy when he said something stupid. In this, of course, we were not ranged against whatever opponent was on the horizon, but against the that opponent's staff who were doing the same thing.
Our sanity did not really return until we were off the rollercoaster of working for him. But I can say that it gave us perspective in hindsight. So I can say that for someone watching all this, the only counter to this sort of collective lunacy is to look at the bosses directly and not get sidetracked by the staffs.
So, Candidate Romney says he opposes birth control and choice--the staff will go into high alert and issue statements after that fact saying that of course he supports choice and contraception. Except that he doesn't. But no matter, the staff must follow the path of making the candidate electable and countering the opposition. They may not even like and respect him (that comes out in memoirs later on). But in the heat of the moment, and the rush to win, it sometimes becomes a matter of two accounts: what the candidate says and what his staff says as it cleans up the mess.
Hoe do I know this? I've been there. My president used to like making controversial statements. His staff ran around behind him trying to modulate or counter by "interpreting" his comments to create the image of the man we had been hired to promote. Sometimes we did this a bit hollowly since we knew where he stood, but we covered him and ran interference for him sometimes without knowing any alternative.
Don't get me wrong--staffs are wonderful. But when it comes to politics (university or national) my experience is that it is wisest to listen to what the man is actually saying and doing rather than relying on an overworked staff desperately hoping to get the candidate elected. They like their jobs too. .
Still, there is something to say. So let me launch into the nature of campaign staffs, which is something about which I have absolute first-hand knowledge.
I was assistant to the president of a major university system. That made me aide-de-camp, trouble-shooter, bottle washer, confidant, and booster all wrapped up into one. Think the staffs of Romney and Obama and you have my role. I was paid well, and I was good at it. But also think that there was a complete breakdown of any distance between the staff and our employer.
If my boss got a bruise, his staff bled That's how close we got and also how close he wanted it. If he said something stupid, we were on instant damage control. Ditto if he said something honest that was likely to give advantage to his opponent. We staff sat around agonizing over every perceived slight, every opposing point, every slight advantage--they all took on earth-shattering importance and had to be neutralized. We were so deeply involved that sometimes even our boss became like the enemy when he said something stupid. In this, of course, we were not ranged against whatever opponent was on the horizon, but against the that opponent's staff who were doing the same thing.
Our sanity did not really return until we were off the rollercoaster of working for him. But I can say that it gave us perspective in hindsight. So I can say that for someone watching all this, the only counter to this sort of collective lunacy is to look at the bosses directly and not get sidetracked by the staffs.
So, Candidate Romney says he opposes birth control and choice--the staff will go into high alert and issue statements after that fact saying that of course he supports choice and contraception. Except that he doesn't. But no matter, the staff must follow the path of making the candidate electable and countering the opposition. They may not even like and respect him (that comes out in memoirs later on). But in the heat of the moment, and the rush to win, it sometimes becomes a matter of two accounts: what the candidate says and what his staff says as it cleans up the mess.
Hoe do I know this? I've been there. My president used to like making controversial statements. His staff ran around behind him trying to modulate or counter by "interpreting" his comments to create the image of the man we had been hired to promote. Sometimes we did this a bit hollowly since we knew where he stood, but we covered him and ran interference for him sometimes without knowing any alternative.
Don't get me wrong--staffs are wonderful. But when it comes to politics (university or national) my experience is that it is wisest to listen to what the man is actually saying and doing rather than relying on an overworked staff desperately hoping to get the candidate elected. They like their jobs too. .
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