It Starts Early for Girls

It starts early for girls. Most of us have the experience of being grabbed and manhandled by some adult man before we’re old enough to vote. Possibly before we reach puberty. It might be a stranger, or a family friend. It might be a family member. It might happen on the job, especially if that first job is in food service. Restaurants do not pay waitresses. They subcontract that duty out to customers. Young women learn early that they must be pleasing and flirtatious, and tolerate unacceptable behavior with a smile if they want to be paid. It provides excellent early training for young women in what they can expect for the rest of their lives. That early grooming may be one reason we see some women defending Trump.

By now you’ve heard Donald Trump boasting on tape about how celebrity status means you can kiss and grab women, in the crudest of terms, to his giggling, testosterone fueled fratboy buddy, one of the lesser Bushes. Trump was 60 years old at the time. His wife was pregnant. For me the worst part of the whole tape was the way he referred to the actress that he and Fratboy Bush were about to glom onto as “it” - as in “it looks good.” Women aren’t actually people to Trump, they are objects. If they look good, they are objects that Trump is entitled to. If he doesn’t find them attractive, they are objects for public ridicule.

To dismiss this as “locker room talk” is not only insulting to women, it’s insulting to all of the decent men in the world who would never dream of speaking or acting that way. It’s a way of slapping the old “boys will be boys” label on this mess, as if we should tolerate and expect this behavior from boys, even when the boys in question are nearly old enough to collect Social Security.

This has created a big problem for the GOP, who weren’t all that popular with women to begin with. The recent émigrés to the Trump bandwagon are in a real predicament. In February, John Sununu Pere wrote an editorial piece for the Union Leader and urged people not to drink the “Trump Kool-Aid.” Recently we learned he’d been guzzling that particular beverage, presumably in the hopes that his son would be able to ride Trump’s coattails to the governor’s mansion. Chris Sununu isn’t backing down. He’s blithely giving Trump a pass, something his daughter may have a few things to say about in the future.

Speaking of daughters, imagine being one of Trump’s daughters, hearing that tape of their father discussing how he grabs women by the genitals, and “they let him”. The night of the debate, his younger daughter engaged in what appeared to be a very practiced maneuver to avoid being kissed by her father. One of my friends sent me the clip. He’s disgusted that we live in a world where girls learn how to do this.

Since this big revelation, we’ve seen a lot of reactions. Some Republicans have washed their hands of Trump. Senator Kelly Ayotte was engaging in a curious kind of dance, where she said she was supporting Trump but not endorsing him. She wanted to show her support for the GOP ideology without taking any kind of principled stand against Trump. She’s been freed to ditch him. Serial liar Frank Guinta once hoped to ride the Trumptails back to Congress, and now has to contend with not only the withering contempt of the NH Union Leader (the GOP’s statewide newsletter) but also with the fleas he’s picking up from lying down with that particular dog. Guinta also has a daughter. How proud she must be.

There is a certain irony in the fact that Trump started off by demonizing Mexicans, then moved on to all-purpose xenophobia by demonizing all immigrants, Muslims, and mocked a reporter with a disability. By far and away, though, the majority of his contempt throughout the years has been for women. His bizarre obsession with Rosie O’Donnell comes to mind. Once you have a billion dollars, and build yourself a tacky gilded palace complete with gold plated plumbing fixtures, one appears to have a lot of time on one’s hands for celebrity feuds and beauty pageants. The way he spoke about Miss Universe is certainly a lesson in perceived ownership, racism and contempt.

This is what a big chunk of the electorate wants to elevate to the highest office in our land. A morally bankrupt individual who loudly bellows ignorant proclamations, engages in rambling, sniffly speeches, promises to fix things but has no actual plan for anything, other than yonking down a tic-tac and kissing some women and grabbing them. Our country is sick. Trump isn’t the disease, but he’s the loudest and orangest symptom of it.

The disease is the contempt for government that the Republican Party began to nurture during the Reagan administration. They said gummint was the problem, and went on to elect a host of folks who did their level best to prove it. That was further fed by the Citizens United decision that unleashed unrestricted cash in the service of electing more terrible people. Tea Party ideologues have taken root and worked hard to obstruct in Congress, in the US Senate, and in state legislatures throughout the land, including New Hampshire.

This election cycle has cheapened the process so much that I don’t see how we can ever recover. Whatever happens in the general election – the aftermath is going to be ugly.

Trump has provided us with a barometer. Those who are supporting him despite recent revelations have made an illustrative choice. They may say that Trump’s commentary was offensive, give it the locker-room whitewash, and label it a distraction – but the fact that they’ve chosen to continue to support him means that they have just as much contempt for women and even more contempt for the process than their candidate.   

It starts early for girls. There’s no end in sight.

The Latest Skirmish in the War on Women

As we get closer to the midterm elections, the rhetoric is ratcheting up. Americans for Prosperity (aka the Koch brothers) is continuing to run their ridiculous ads stating that Jeanne Shaheen cast THE DECIDING VOTE for Obamacare. In other states, the name is changed to fit the candidate the Kochs are working against. My question is this: why don’t the Koch brothers want non-wealthy Americans to have health insurance?

I’ve never been a fan of the Affordable Care Act. I was unhappy when single payer advocates weren’t even given a seat at the table when it was being discussed. I was unhappy there was no public option. I’m downright peeved that this mess was a project of the Heritage Foundation, something that all those who bark about “socialism” either don’t know or don’t care to acknowledge.

The ACA has meant the end of the pre-existing condition. That is an incredibly good thing. It has given young people the option of staying on their parents insurance longer. It has also meant that a lot of people who couldn’t afford insurance before are able to afford it now. The GOP rumblings of “free market solutions” ought to be met with derision. They had decades to create those solutions, and they never did. The only plan the Kochs and their acolytes have for the non-wealthy can be summed up in one word. Die.

The reasons we need a single payer system in this country were made clear in the recent Supreme Court decision on the Hobby Lobby case. Hobby Lobby is a family owned company. They have a chain of stores that sell craft supplies. They are apparently a religious family, and they were miffed that the ACA meant they were mandated to provide insurance to their female employees that covered all forms of birth control. It offended their religious sensibilities, they claimed, so they took it to SCOTUS, and the Roberts court, ever happy to rule against women, did so.

Prior to the ACA, Hobby Lobby stores offered insurance that covered the same forms of birth control that they suddenly got religion over when Obamacare came along. Remember all the people who wailed about putting the gummint between people and their doctors? They are now oddly silent at the ruling that puts employers between women and their doctors. After all, who better to make women’s health care decisions than purveyors of cheap craft supplies imported from China?

Good news for men though. Your erectile dysfunction drugs, penis pumps, and penile implants will continue to be covered by all forms of insurance. The religious do not want you to believe that your impotence is God’s will. God, it seems, is only intent on legislating the uterus.

There are a number of reasons we need single payer health care. The first is to eliminate employers from the equation. Health care should not be tied to employment. Health care should not be employer approved or supervised

Hot on the heels of the Hobby Lobby decision came the Wheaton decision, where a religious college in Illinois decided they didn’t want to fill out waiver forms for Obamacare that stipulated they were too religious to provide whore pills for their female students. Naturally the male members of the Supreme Court thought that was just fine. Now Gordon College in Massachusetts (a small, non-profit Christian school in Wenham, MA) has decided to seize the moment. They’ve signed on to a letter asking President Obama to exempt them from an executive order (that hasn’t been put into effect yet) banning discrimination in hiring on the basis of sexual orientation. Apparently nothing says, “we are followers of Jesus Christ” quite like discrimination.

I have written before that here in the US, we’ve stopped thinking about or planning for the future. In fact, our heels are dug in, and a great many of our leaders are working to turn the clock back, to an imaginary time of great happiness for them. The 1950’s. (Or for some, the 1800’s.) In the 1950’s women knew their place. They were at home, cooking, cleaning, caring for the kids, and voting the way their husbands told them to. They didn’t have many birth control options.  If they got pregnant and couldn’t afford another baby, they had back alley abortions and some of them died. Those who favor the 1800’s would prefer to go back to the days when women were essentially chattel. They couldn’t own property, sign contracts, vote, or have any legal voice in the lives of their children. They were the property of fathers, brothers, or husbands. A number of conservatives these days publicly yearn for the days when women couldn’t vote. David Barton the fauxhistorian claims that denying the vote to women kept families together. Ann Coulter doesn’t seem to understand that without suffragists, she’d be home birthin’ and scrubbin’.

The birth control pill changed everything. That and the decision in Roe v. Wade. Suddenly women had control over their own bodies! They were no longer hostage to their reproductive organs and the men in their lives. Naturally, this displeased a number of men. It still does. They’ve been trying for decades to turn the clock back, and eradicate any gains made by women. Pretending concern for life is one of the most hypocritical. The same men who rail against abortion are at the borders turning away buses filled with refugee children. The deeply religious folk at Hobby Lobby, Gordon College, and Wheaton aren’t filling buses, hitting up the ATM, and heading down to the border to care for those same children. The terrorists and “sidewalk counselors” who harangue women entering health clinics aren’t interested in caring for actual children. For all of these hypocrites, it’s all about imaginary fetuses. Imagine how much better children’s lives would be if the focus were on the born instead of the not even conceived? 

As for the ongoing war on women, the question is simple. Are women fully equal human beings with the same right to bodily autonomy and medical privacy as men? Yes or no? 

© sbruce 2014. Published as a biweekly op-ed in the Conway Daily Sun newspaper. 

h/t to patriotboy for GOP Jesus, and Mike Thompson for Blasphemy.

Knitting Needles, Coathangers, and Black Market Drugs

Erica Hallerstein's excellent story called "The Rise of the DIY Abortion in Texas" was in The Atlantic last week. It's an important and well written story - of what the future looks like for women in states where they have no rights when it comes to their own reproduction. 

The future will contain knitting needles and coathangers - and it will also contain black market drugs. 

I thought we'd moved past all this, didn't you?


This is great work by Erica Hellerstein. Read it. Pass it on. Thank her on twitter at @E_Hellerstein, and listen to the podcast of her interview with Arnie and I on WNHN.

Hypocrisy on a Platter: Fun in Fosters

On August 24,  Fosters published an opinion piece by Ashley Pratte, the Executive Director of Cornerstone Policy Research. From Ms. Pratte's scattered, confusing, and somewhat dishonest opus:

In recent weeks there has been discussion around the topic of abortion as well as female objectification when recent sexting scandals were brought to light.

It is important to note that I myself am a single, twenty-four year old woman involved in activism in New Hampshire. On a regular basis I am subject to constant criticism because of my pro-life views.

I think I speak on behalf of all women when I say enough is enough. We need to stand up for ourselves and not be degrading to one another. While as females we may hold a variety of different opinions and beliefs there is one thing that binds us all and that is our gender. If we ever hope to be respected by men we must first respect ourselves.

Last week a known blogger here in the Granite State found it necessary to tweet the following, “@ashpratte @demchairs at least they won’t hit you. Or leer at your boobs. Or call you a “vagina”. They aren’t republican men after all.” Not only do I find this tweet to be horribly offensive but it depicts the culture that we are living in. Women are constantly the subject of degradation especially those in the political arena. 

Oh, some naughty blogger offended poor Ashley. 

That would be me. Fosters generously agreed to give me space, and they've just published  my rebuttal  to the horribly offended Ms. Pratte. Some highlights:

In April Rep. Peter Hansen of Amherst became world famous for calling women “vagina’s” (his grammatical error) in an internal NH House email. I tweeted Pratte to ask if this was an example of family values, since Hansen has a high rating on the Cornerstone legislative report card. No response.

In July, Representatives Jordan Ulery and Gary Hopper came under fire for their internal House emails, which included a cheesecake picture of a nubile young woman. There was no reason for the picture to be included, other than the reason that all women are familiar with — the one that involves drool. Both Ulery and Hopper have high Cornerstone ratings. I tweeted Ms. Pratte to ask about her silence on the subject. No response.

On Aug. 5, we learned that a Republican Super Pac registered in Nashua was hosting a video game called Slap Hillary. What could be funnier than slapping women? This is certainly a novel way of showing respect to a former First Lady, US Senator, and Secretary of State. This was an opportunity for Ms. Pratte to express her concerns about respect for women. She didn’t take it. 

On Aug. 6, in an attempt at snark, Ms. Pratte tweeted out, “What an exciting new follow @DemChairs.” For those not conversant in twitspeak, that means that DemChairs had just opted to follow Pratte on Twitter. My “horrifying and offensive” tweet was in response to that. I tweeted “At least they won’t hit you. Or leer at your boobs, or call you a “vagina” They aren’t Republican men after all.”

I combined those three incidents of disrespect that Pratte had intentionally ignored into one tweet. “Hit you” was a reference to Slap Hillary. “Stare at your boobs” referred to Ulery and Hopper’s soft-core porn, and “call you a vagina” was a direct reference to Rep. Hansen. All are items she’d gotten tweets from me about, which makes her slow ride to horribly offended seem a bit contrived.

It is difficult to take Pratte’s finger waving about respect seriously. She is saying is that in order to show her proper respect as a woman, I must refrain from commenting as she ignores GOP men who are degrading women. She wants me to ignore her hypocrisy. 

Sadly for Miss Ashley, that is a thing I cannot do. 

I mentioned dishonesty. At the end of Ms. Pratte's op-ed, she gives a big shout out to Cornerstone, yet fails to mention her connection to the organization. She's the Executive Director. 

In making this a big public thing, Ms. Pratte has succeeded in exposing her poor reading and writing skills, and put her hypocrisy on a platter for all of us to admire. 

Thanks, Ashley!