Sisterhood

    Now that voting one's gender has been taken off the table, it's time to bring it back - or at least if women want.

    It's a typical crap piece of pseudo-emancipation; women are told they don't need to be their anatomy - when all around us we see women lauded most for being their anatomy.

    Kim Kardashian made $53 million last year, much more than her musician husband - presumably for "fashion", which roughly translates to ways to show cleavage and her naked ass and a reality show walking around jiggling.

    When the Sony hack revealed Jennifer Lawrence made ~25% less than her male co-stars*, she blamed her negotiating technique, wanting to be liked & not wanting to fight (unlike the male actors who fought for more). But Patricia Arquette's Oscar speech on wage and role equality immediately drew attacks - from women. It wasn't enough to speak as a woman - she hadn't mentioned LGBT and black subgroups, didn't say X, Y & Z, yadda yadda.

    It's never enough to just be women concerned about women. That would just be selfish.

    The Lilly Ledbetter paycheck act was based on a perverse Supreme Court decision that stated that even though her company was hiding that it was paying her less, Lilly's clock for redress started ticking from the time she first *didn't* know she was being screwed till when she reported it, even though it was ongoing for years. Imagine I started putting poison in your coffee 25 years ago, but you only found out about it last week - well oops, the statute of limitations ran out 5 or 10 years ago, so I can just keep on doing it.

    Women have a long history of such perverse access to justice, from the Constitution that ignores them to the otherwise groundbreaking 15th amendment that encodes their lack of voting power. To the 1848 meeting at Seneca Falls advancing women's property rights but women's suffrage (supported nobly by Frederick Douglass) would take 72 years longer to achieve despite the equality amendments passed after the Civil War.

    During WWII women famously filled the factories while men went to war - and obediently went back to the suburban kitchen once the war was over. During the 60's fight for rights and equality, women were there side by side - as the sexual prize of the free love and and hippie protest movement, especially with newly effective contraception - the bunny movement could thrive. During the 90's economic boom and rise of the internet, women's roles rose - in HR & finance, web design and social media, or PR & marketing, tied to those cute-looking ubiquitous Booth Babes at every convention. Glass ceilings abounded elsewhere.

    It was seriously pissing in the punch bowl when a female social media organizer 3 years ago outed some geeky heroes of internet making typical Beavis & Butthead jokes - getting one fired unintentionally - and herself fired as well. But at least it's clued the tech community in to new more inclusive standards, which is much more than you can say for the TV and political world, which has just endured its first "schlonging" and "blood coming out of her wherever" events (whereafter the conservative media mogul begs the potty mouthed instigator to come back and be friends), which make Obama calling a reporter "sweetie" seem like the good ol' days.

    But that was at least men attacking women. Back in the real world, while health care plans have long covered Viagra, Cathie Adams - head of Texas' GOP - was raising money on Obamacare purportedly giving Viagra to rapists and sex offenders (obviously she cared more about Obamacare's other provisions than male incontinence), while Nuns were suing because they thought contraception was also an abortofacient (it isn't) and GOP female candidate Carly Fiorina was showing doctored videos claiming to be Planned Parenthood, all to shut down any expansion of the health benefits that largely help women.

    Hobby Lobby, a large arts & crafts company, leveraged its supposed religious beliefs to remove contraception benefits, even as it ignored scripture in many of its other practices (one might think money was the operating factor here, but Rush's takedown of a coed's contraceptive use as "slutty" might have set the tone). It's perverse that we've gone from 80s attacks on "Welfare Mothers" with their "overbreeding" along with "anchor babies" in the 90's and 2000's to the current concern about women having too much birth control (and certainly no abortion thanks to the archaic Hyde Act, even Democrat-forced provisions in ACA and late attacks) - but every day's a good day to attack women in America, since they're half likely to blame someone else and have little power anyway.

    It was the first year of Obama's presidency that George Tiller was assassinated outside an abortion clinic - the start of an intensified fight against abortion, shutting clinics down in state after state via bogus new health regulations, limits to chemical abortion (RU-486 and similar), and straight out laws against abortion - some of which have partially held.

    Meanwhile, reported in November on a rape epidemic among police officers, nearly 1000 cops nationwide lost their badges for a variety of sexual offenses, in almost all cases using their badges and positions of power in scary one-on-one situations to force women into sex. And those are partial numbers, as states largely don't keep records. 

    And it's not even a topic in this campaign, as aren't most "female issues" that by default must be subsumed or displaced by a larger non-female problem. Similar to rmrd's complaint that America's racism isn't covered by economic prescriptions, sexism and women's need for more support and structural change isn't covered by civil rights or Glass-Steagall or trade policy - there's a huge list of outstanding issues that needs to be addressed, and largely won't.

    As Madeleine might have said more daintily, there's a place in hell for women who don't support their own female interests - and that hell's the living hell of the constantly tilted playing field. But that rephrasing would largely neuter the issue - there's a large grand brotherhood at play, the accepted "normal" that makes it unlikely women will get good roles, executive or law partner positions, treated seriously in tech, or even treated with dignity rather than abuse at a late night traffic stop.

    Women are as hard on women in various affairs and scandals and inequalities as men, as Maureen Dowd over-exemplifies. Even the backlash against Albright is unusual in that her pronouncement is as well known as "a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle", repeated across decades. God forbid she had shouted it out like most on the speaking circuit do or Fox and MSNBC, or said something half as outrageous as Trump or Cruz or Mario spreading their medieval Christian or Neanderthalish outlook on their cheering fans (or that Chris Matthews has said in prime-time about Hillary).

    But yes, women need each other's support, those "little acts of kindness" that can make all the difference in a society still not that different in bias from Dangerous Liaisons and Anna Karenina days. Cara Joy David points out the need for networking, even noting there's frequently only 1 token female position in play for aspiring women to fight over. (There's the Bechdel Test that famously notes the shrunken men-absorbed roles women have in most movies). Women help each other out during joblessness, child-rearing, building those home businesses, finding courage for self-promotion where men have it more naturally and more accepted, dealing with their always over-studied looks and lack of self-esteem, the lack of opportunity, the subtle and not-so-subtle discrimination, or even preparing for a hopefully safe date....

    Yes, there's a Sisterhood, and it deserves to be respected and promoted and expanded on, not shamed out of existence. The law and social customs have never kept up with the needs of women, so that back channels and other forms of encouragement and support have always been needed. And yes, including areas like compassion towards immigrants and other races, care for the sick and dying and disabled, educating the next generation, the mental issues that women have often suffered in silence, the tenuous grip with an abusive spouse... 

    There's a chance that perversely with a strong female candidate that women's issues will again be given short shrift, dismissed as just a campaign convenience rather than a real requirement by a real very large constituency - with the male candidate again professed to be the real carrier of the female flame. With all the spoken concern that the last 2 decade's rise in wage inequality be the centerpiece of this year's election, it's once again ironic that the largest group affected by this inequality will likely have its needs marginalized yet again.

    Fight on, care on, help on.

     

    *Seeing as Lawrence has just filmed her first sex scene, her shelf-life as an actress is likely to last at least until the ripe old age of 35. Yay!

    Comments

    Looks like the girls are helping keep Hillary competitive in the desert. 60% results in, rocking socking in Las Vegas.

    Or the other girls.  (looks like the papers are gonna lead with "narrow win", though with Vegas only 60% counted, looks like it'll be fairly high margin in the end, including Vegas near 10% margin, plus a 21-15 lead in total delegates with 7 to commit.

    Update: 5.3% not bad, 10 point lead in Vegas with 90% counted. Not so narrow,  22 to 16 delegates with 5 still out, so she easily won that.


    Narrow/high margin is in the eye of the supporter, but a six point spread ain't bad at all.

    The low turnout overall is concerning coming on the heels of the same in Iowa and New Hampshire. For Sanders, it undercuts his main electability message - but it's very problematic for all Democrats since Republican numbers are up. Yes, they have more candidates (which is just as important as Trump's presence thus far), yet they also have party interest.

    PS to Peracles ... you look good in drag.


    Drag?

    I had no idea that Peracles was transfactual!


    Yep, you thought I only knew how to rock a kilt, eh? But what happens in Vegas slays in Vegas.


    Yeah, 6%="edges out" (NY Times) or "narrowly" (LA Times), or "hangs on" (Huffpost) but WaPo has "regains momentum". Lead in delegates should also hold as mostly 9% Vegas/Clark and 27%  Nys (favoring Hillary by 10+ points) a tiny 3% in Washoe (favoring Bernie) to report. 

    Will be hard for Bernie to spin the popular vote line on superdelegates, and geographically Hillary took over half of the state with desert sectors, so no rallying "it was rigged" points there.


    Nah, it's a clear result with no need for superdelegate angst. Probably best for the party to let that issue rest for now; it's divisive and unnecessary.

    The media is exasperating. I watched in real time (both MSNBC and CNN) as prior to the results it was the same "Sanders has the youth behind him in droves!", "Turnout here is huge, which is all good for Sanders!", "Clinton should win here easily, but she might lose!"

    After the numbers came in? "There weren't enough young voters!", "Turnout is down, where does Sanders go from here?", "Clinton was always expected to win!"

    My favorite tidbit is that Harry Reid (undeclared) called the leaders of the Culinary Union (undeclared) yesterday to politely suggest that the Vegas employees have the necessary time to caucus without loss of pay - for whoever they chose. Turns out many employers gave them time off. Vegas went for Hillary. As one pundit put it, Bernie hit The Establishment™ wall.

    We need major changes, but they can't happen if you're not at the table.


    They're still claiming to have Hispanics because of some early exit polls, plus the "under 45" vote, which is a lot more than the youth vote. March 1 should clear that up.

    On the GOP side, the establishment is definitely smashed, and with any of the top 3 I don't see how Hispanics vote Republican. Strange seeing 2 leading immigrant contenders so anti-immigration. And the 3 "nice guys" at the bottom together barely equal 1 Cruz or Rubio. Hard to see Trump not doing well Super Tuesday. Will be a strange November contest.

    But my daughter thinks Trump's just setting it up for Hillary, never intended to take office, just wanted to bring down the GOP. Would be great theater.


    With caucuses it's an "entrance poll", and the Hispanic number is debatable once the age factor is in play.

    Your daughter has a fabulous imagination - not sure about the Hillary bit, but taking down the GOP seems plausible!


    Aaargh, just lost a long response. MSNBC had entrance polls & CNN exits or vice versa - but Hillary won several heavily Hispanic districts, so likely not accurate, as Nate Silver noted last night live. The most generous reading would have the Hispanic vote a bit tilted towards Bernie, hardly a blowout, and will make most difference in southwest states.

    WaPo had a long piece on how horrible it is for Hillary - as usual - even though she's solidified her black support with Clyburn & her Nevada performance going into highly important South Carolina and the southern states for Mar 1. And with a 430 superdelegate lead and her showing well with popular vote, Bernie's call to release superdelegates won't hold much water.

    Late polls have been pretty indicative, giving Hillary pretty unbeatable odds for Mar 1 across the south from Texas to Virginia (with Oklahoma about tied), while Bernie of course has Mass and VT. Michigan on Mar 8 is also polling heavily for Hillary. Mar 15 dates are a bit too far away at 3 weeks, 2 days, and will depend a lot on Super Tuesday, plus looks like North Carolina got pushed to June due to a court gerrymandering decision. (Polls here and here)

    Basically, Bernie needed Nevada bad.


    Too long,didn't load, huh?

    Kinda - was trying to include all of Hillary's speech transcripts, and the home secured web/email server shut down.


    You did WHAT??!! get outta the house NOW!! If there's a white van on the street, use w window, not the door. Good luck, pilgrim!

    Always have an escape route. My best was climbing down the drainpipe to the Greyhound bus line behind the building. Then there was the industrial A/C shaft, and the commercial loading dock. Or the rooftop access to the next-door furrier - place always had a wonderful smell, poor beasties.

    More I'm amused with the Kabuki theater pretending they haven't hacked the Apple phones 7 different ways by now - all about showing precedent & extending legal barriers, not any particular technical hurdle.


    The NYT has a good article today suggesting that Clinton "won" the Hispanic vote. The real bottom line, though, is that entrance/exit polls aren't worth much.


    As you point out, the division among women now is much as it's always been - generational. Yet as "equality" has been progressively achieved, it seems almost weird that what used to be a battle against others has become a fight amongst ourselves. For better or worse.

    The mothers-versus-daughters narrative, long an election-year trope, is particularly pronounced now, and tinged with stereotypes on both sides. The idealistic but ungrateful naïfs who think sexism is a thing of the past and believe, as Mr. Sanders recently said, that “people should not be voting for candidates based on their gender” are seemingly battling the pantsuited old scolds prattling on about feminism.

    Instead, the reality may be another kind of simple numbers game: More time in a sexist world, and particularly in the workplace, radicalizes women.

    It's life experience that can't be explained or defined to fresh faces looking forward, even as our old eyes applaud their view. But sometimes, it helps to be reminded where we used to be.

    There is  a strange report, at HP, of Sanders supporters shouting down a woman Clinton supporter doing Spanish translation in LV, with a English Only chant. This was especially odd because the Sandernistas also had translators at the caucus. This doesn't surprise me because Bernie's supporters have shown reactionary tendencies before but what was puzzling was whom were the Spanish translations for?

    Only US citizens are allowed to participate in these primaries and vote in federal elections and basic English proficiency is required for immigrants to become citizens.  This may show that the Republicans were right to be concerned about Democrats bringing illegal, not qualified, immigrants into the political process.

     


    Seriously? Basic English proficiency is required for citizenship, but not complex English to explain complex caucus rules that even journalists and politicians have trouble with, especially in a crowded noisy environment.

    And I ignored the "English Only" bit - I imagine there's some misunderstanding and it's not all that bad - I doubt Bernie's supporters would be that stupid to go insulting a group they wanted to win. Blame it on the caucus freak show, but we got through it.


    I think you've stated you are isolated from the Homeland so i can understand your not being aware of the bigoted and sexist behavior of some of Sanders' supporters that was reported when he was confronted by the women from BLM.

    I think you are inferring that some immigrant  citizens are too slow to follow directions and I'm sure that even the least educated of them are more intelligent than the nitwit news reporters or the pinheaded politicians in this freak show.


    Der Homeland? Really?

    Well, I speak a foreign language well enough after all these years to get by here, but it can still give me fits in practical situations and I still think it dumb there's not More English as lingua franca. And poorer immigrants who spend most of their time doing menial work quite possibly have poorly developed English skills even If I as a pampered educated class am relatively fluent in much easier Spanish. So yeah, having a translator in a state known for bilingualism and recent immigrants makes sense. I have a problem with America's bizarre approach to immigration policy, but I'd like it solved at high government policy level, not fucking with the average dependent and panicked immigrant.

    And yes, JR - I'm an alien, I'm a legal alien, I'm an alien in New York somewhere.


    Yes exactly. My wife was Mexican. Her grandparents were the original immigrants who spoke enough English to get by and not much more. Her mother was bilingual and my wife barely spoke Spanish. Many of the older first generation immigrants in her family and friends spoke little English but they were all citizens and eligible to vote. Perhaps, likely, the requirements have been stepped up but there are still many older Mexicans that are citizens with limited English proficiency.


    If you read the article you are referring to, you will become less puzzled about the context of what the dispute over translators was about.

    I am not aware of any initiative to bring illegal immigrants into the political process. Please enlighten me.


    The damage control PR people are tidying up this embarrassing display with 'context. and other BS but Delores Huerta was an eye/ear witness to this chant, soon she and other witnesses will probably recant their statements for the good of the Party and it will join other incidents circling down the memory hole.

    Another telling statement made in this report was that many of the participants in this caucus did not speak English which if true would mean they were not naturalized citizens.

    I didn't mention illegal immigrants only unqualified voters who could be legal residents.


    On the contrary, you did mention illegal immigrants. Per your comment several minutes ago: "This may show that the Republicans were right to be concerned about Democrats bringing illegal, not qualified, immigrants into the political process."

     


    My poor attempt to be clever did lure you into making that assumption but again i was referring to the legal immigrants who are not qualified to vote in these caucuses/elections. Legal residents who are not yet citizens are doing something illegal if the vote in these caucuses.


    I'm pretty positive not many non-citizen residents - documented or not - are going to a caucus illegally to risk being deported. Hans van Spakovsky has been chasing that mythical Unicorn for years quite profitably but without any actual confirmation that the wildebeest exists in the real world. Great work if you can get it. "use your illusion" Guns 'n Roses called it.


    'Pretty positive' is a pretty weak statement but i don't make any assumptions or judgments about these reports either. No one has interrogated these people, in Spanish, to determine their status.

    The statements by Democrats at the caucus about there being non English speakers present that needed translators seem to be a typically clueless/inclusive bit of rhetoric that may be used by the Republicans to support their claims of voter fraud and a return to the old days of Democrat ballot stuffing and voter rolls full of dead people.


    Well "pretty positive" is how Hans van Spakovsky has made a career of legal-fucking minorities over supposed voting violations that never actually happen. Yes, intelligent grownups in this world make educated guesses and "assumptions" based on real world experience and measured data, unlike that asshole shill for right-wing gerrymandering and disenfranchisement.

    Nevada's a fucking bilingual state, where a lot of Hispanics have marginal English abilities. This doesn't take a brainiac to know, and we didn't bring them here or let them in to be English teachers for the most part. Cleaning a bedpan, making a bed or operating a shake machine or digging a ditch seems to be the work half of them are expected to do, so providing semantic analysis of John Dos Passos' USA Trilogy is probably not part of their value to America. And the Republicans can suck my American ****.


    The only assumption I made was that your use of English implied an understanding of the language. Perhaps I was hasty in that regard.

    I have been following your line of reasoning that prompted you to see the use of Spanish as an indication that something illegal must be happening. You should look into this exciting idea and see if there is anything to it.


    I de-barb my lures so you should be able to remove that hook from your lip without too much pain and shame.


    So, you tricked me into thinking you were saying something you weren't saying by saying it. 

    Time for the hammer:

     


    This is ridiculous. You post crap with no link to where you get your information. You do not attempt to verify your source. The claim that Sanders supporters originated with one person and was picked up by others. Snopes noted early on that there was conflicting data about the events described by the initial tweet.

    http://www.snopes.com/sanders-english-only-huerta/

    The idea that Sanders supporters shouted down Dolores Huerta is not confirmed.The moderator of the Caucus seems to have been the one who halted translation because there were no translator not affiliated with either Hillary or Bernie. 

    Plinks are important because anyone can claim they read something at a particular site. Sometimes posts get taken down because they are in error. Links provide conformation the the post is valid. When one is making a wholesale charge that some supporters did one thing or another, the charge can be supported by a variety of sources. In this case, we cannot say with accuracy that Sanders supporters did anything wrong.

    Your argument once against is based on inaccurate data.


    Back on track, the "moderate" Kashich defunds Planned Parenthood as part of the GOP war on abortion. *HALF* the abortion clinics closed under his watch. Yes, Sisters need to stick together, cause the Brotherhood's got it in for them.

    Just months after becoming governor, Kasich signed a bill banning abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy unless the fetus is nonviable. In 2013, Kasich signed a budget that stripped roughly $1.4 million in family planning funds from Planned Parenthood, required abortion providers to perform ultrasounds on patients seeking abortions and allowed rape crisis centers to be stripped of their public funds if they referred victims to abortion providers, among other measures. The budget also blocked public hospitals from entering into transfer agreements for medical emergencies with abortion clinics, threatening clinics with closure if they couldn't get a private hospital to enter into those agreements. Because private hospitals often have religious affiliations, this arrangement often wasn't possible.

    In all, nearly half of Ohio’s abortion clinics have closed since Kasich took office.

    Last year, Kasich also said that he supports a state bill that would ban abortions for Down syndrome. Critics argue that the bill violates the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling, which declared that women can choose to get an abortion at any point until the fetus is viable and that the choice to get an abortion should be a private matter between the patient and her doctor, not determined by the government. 


    The vanishing abortion clinic - Mississippi, Missouri, Wyoming and the Dakotas now have 1 clinic each.

    73 abortion clinics shut down in 2014, and a net loss of 219 since 2013. 81% have closed since 1991, brags Operation Rescue.


    You have to wonder why, with all the Liberal and some conservative support in government for abortion rights, abortion and much of women's reproductive health services were privatized and separated from the protections they would have had if they had been incorporated into the state/county hospital system.

    Was this just a stupid mistake or were there political reasons for keeping this right under attack for decades?


    Trouble understanding what you're saying. States have been attacking abortion - put under state control clinics'd disappear in half the states. Mini-hyde amendments across the country. And they're not terribly profitable, so foregoing any Planned Parenthood support is hard going.

    The most bizarre thing is that medical abortion is easy, effective, much less ugly than surgical abortion - but unlike Europe, it's also being suppressed. You'd think these fuckers actually cared about kids or women.


    A large group of medical professionals are asking this same question about why abortion services were isolated from hospitals and those involved in abortion rights in the '70s stated they assumed after the SCOTUS decision that hospitals would incorporate these services.

    You may have noticed that many of the states are using this disconnect to shut down abortion services with laws requiring hospital backup, doctor/hospital certification and other requirements that wouldn't be a problem with an internal hospital program. The anti-abortion forces can't directly attack the right to abortions but they can and are successfully attacking the atomized system that provides these services.

    The actual abortion services provided under the protective umbrella of hospitals probably wouldn't differ much from the present system and even could be operated by Planned Parenthood or other contractors. It would be better protected from bombers, shooters, demonstrators and political attacks by the power and security offered by these institutions.

     


    Latest Comments