Women as Special Interest Group
By Betsy Phillips in Legislature
Mon., Jun. 1 2009 @ 8:04PM
I was going to tell you all about Liberal Blogger Day on the Hill, but what you need to know can be summed up in three points:
1. The Democrats love Ty Cobb.
2. If the Spring Hill plant closes, Ty Cobb's district is looking at 30% unemployment.
3. The Democrats feel certain that, if they don't win in 2010, they won't win again for twenty years, so they are formulating a plan.
Gentlemen, please feel free to go on about your lives.
Ladies, please join me after the break.
Next year the Democrats are considering putting forth a bill guaranteeing equal pay for women. I asked Mike Turner how he thought he could get progressive women to give a rat's ass about supporting his bills after how he did us with SJR 127.
And then he proceeded to lecture us about how women's groups don't show up to support anything but abortion bills. Do we see domestic violence folks show up when he's putting forth domestic violence bills? Did groups show up when the Democrats saved the funding to Planned Parenthood? Did we write about it? Etc. Etc. Etc.
Basically, we were chastised for not behaving like a proper special interest group.
Which, of course, we are not. We are, instead, half the population, and a hugely diverse bunch. And we live in a state where supporting women's issues publicly leads people to be ridiculed and harrassed.
So, even if we were all in agreement, which we are not, not even as progressive women, showing up and playing the game the way all the good ole boys do has very different consequences for us.
It's small wonder, then, that most women don't bother to play the game.
Here's the thing. When women have jobs and kids, it is very, very difficult for us to get to the Hill, which seems to be what you have to do to get the legislators to take your issues seriously--you have to lobby them. And when we do support you otherwise--by meeting about what you're doing (which we did about the Planned Parenthood funding, because I was at one such meeting) and writing about it (which folks did, and I was one such person), it's invisible work. It doesn't count, because it's not the right kind.
So, I don't know. It seems like an unsolveable problem. If your real life keeps you from making your life real to the people who need to see you as a real person, what can you do?
1. The Democrats love Ty Cobb.
2. If the Spring Hill plant closes, Ty Cobb's district is looking at 30% unemployment.
3. The Democrats feel certain that, if they don't win in 2010, they won't win again for twenty years, so they are formulating a plan.
Gentlemen, please feel free to go on about your lives.
Ladies, please join me after the break.
Next year the Democrats are considering putting forth a bill guaranteeing equal pay for women. I asked Mike Turner how he thought he could get progressive women to give a rat's ass about supporting his bills after how he did us with SJR 127.
And then he proceeded to lecture us about how women's groups don't show up to support anything but abortion bills. Do we see domestic violence folks show up when he's putting forth domestic violence bills? Did groups show up when the Democrats saved the funding to Planned Parenthood? Did we write about it? Etc. Etc. Etc.
Basically, we were chastised for not behaving like a proper special interest group.
Which, of course, we are not. We are, instead, half the population, and a hugely diverse bunch. And we live in a state where supporting women's issues publicly leads people to be ridiculed and harrassed.
So, even if we were all in agreement, which we are not, not even as progressive women, showing up and playing the game the way all the good ole boys do has very different consequences for us.
It's small wonder, then, that most women don't bother to play the game.
Here's the thing. When women have jobs and kids, it is very, very difficult for us to get to the Hill, which seems to be what you have to do to get the legislators to take your issues seriously--you have to lobby them. And when we do support you otherwise--by meeting about what you're doing (which we did about the Planned Parenthood funding, because I was at one such meeting) and writing about it (which folks did, and I was one such person), it's invisible work. It doesn't count, because it's not the right kind.
So, I don't know. It seems like an unsolveable problem. If your real life keeps you from making your life real to the people who need to see you as a real person, what can you do?
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