It's been months since I posted anything on this blog. Not because there was nothing to post about. I've just been really, really busy, with work and health issues. I'm just now recovering from a really serious pneumonia/sepsis/hypoxemia/anemia bout that very nearly killed me. (Don't wait so long to see a doctor!)
At the end of May, I came across this incredibly stupid comment:
State Senator Glenn Grothman defended Scott Walker's repeal of pay equity protections by explaining to reporters that women aren't paid the same as men for the same work because "money is more important to men." Of course it is. I'm a single woman, self-supporting. Of course, I don't care about money that much. Just that it means the difference between being self-supporting and being on the dole.
There seems to be an entire generation of old white men who feel free to spout the ugliest, most misogynistic nonsense about women whenever they feel like it. Betty Friedan never got the same freedom when she was spouting nonsense about men. She was constantly attacked, viciously attacked, both by men and by the women who will never understand that women are not inherently inferior to men.
So we have Congressional hearings on contraception, to which no women are allowed. Not as members of the committee, not as witnesses to the committee. We have the Texas governor saying that he just can't understand why that woman who fillibustered his pet abortion bill didn't learn from her own experience as a teenage unmarried mother. The governor who crows about executing more people than any other state, who insists that every life is important. Yeah, right.
We have old (and middle-aged, and even some young) white men, in state houses around the country, who are trying their best to take away as many rights from women as they can sneak past their constituents.
And the really sad thing about this is, it is almost universally Republican men who say these things. Sad, because the demise of a a formerly great party is sad. Really sad, because the Republican Party of the past was a much better party than it has devolved into. (Also, sad that a spokesman for Republicans could seriously say that the Party would be more appealing if they just didn't say offensive things. Duh.)
My father was a life-long Republican. I'm glad he didn't live long enough to see what that party has become. He would be a Democrat, today. Possibly an independent. Just definitely not a Republican. I don't know anyone, these days, who identifies as Republican, or who is thinking of joining the Republican Party.
And here's the thing that I really, really just don't get. The Republicans (and all thier subgroups) insist on smaller government, insist that there are too many regulations, too many rules, too much intrusion into the personal lives of our citizens. And it is the Republicans, who nearly every day, extend themselves to regulate a woman's body. Regulations on men are bad, but are good for women? How antiquated is that mindset? How seriously harmful is that mindset? Do they really think that way? Or do they just not think at all, simply spew out their bile and their hatred of women without considering it at all? And what about Republican women? Do they agree? Do they indulge in such self-lothing that they can merrily go along with depriving women of their basic rights, without batting an eye? Or are they so brainwashed by the men in their lives that they don't dare speak up?
Republicans need a wake up call. They are speeding into extinction, and there doesn't seem to be anyone awake at the wheel to stop them, or turn them aside. Maybe that's for the best, but it's still sad.
