OnLine With Zoe

Binary is not Diversity

Last night I went to a meeting of smart, advanced, involved women.  The talk was Hillary.  All the talk was Hillary.  I love Hillary.  I wanted Hillary.  Hillary for President was my PLAN A.  I am still praying for Plan A.

The opposite of Plan A is not defeat.  The opposite of Plan A is not even a good question.  Opposite is 180 degrees and, if I can’t have Plan A, I will only concede ONE DEGREE – I want one degree less than Plan A.  My Plan B is one degree from Plan A.

My Plan B is for all 18 million who voted for Hillary and all the feminists who voted for Barack to join forces and insist that the new Democratic leadership~

1) Commit to gender and racial parity in all three branches of government.  That includes every contract, every appointment, every hire.  That includes the Cabinet, the Courts, all government agencies and contracts.  That includes all of the staff, interns, pages, people in service positions from the kitchen to the garden.  And how about insisting that the press corp also reflects diversity. 

2) In addition to gender and racial parity reflecting the population, every person in this changing of the guard is paid equally for each position. 

3) They support reproductive freedom including, but not limited to, choice.  That means the choice to end a pregnancy and the choice to prevent a pregnancy which does not present abstinence as a reliable vehicle for pregnancy prevention. 

My Plan B would change the landscape on all levels.  It would make seeing women and men of all colors common place in federal government.  Maybe then Rep. Pelosi won’t be asked if she has ever experienced sexism.  Isn’t there a word for the question that contains the answer?  Oh yeah, the person asking the question is an ASS.  Okay, a SEXIST ASS.   

If I can't have Plan A and Senator Obama commits to my PLAN B, I will consider that he is not sexist and consider taking his call.

Who Really had a Pact?

This morning Mayor Carolyn Kirk, of Gloucester, MA, held a press conference (see below).  It was the basic, "It's not our fault," speech.  Teachers say it is the parents.  Parents say it is the teachers.  I can't imagine the brewing contempt these seventeen students must feel for all of these authorities to jam the channels of responsibility. 

The most extraordinary thing is the search to be certain it is or is not a pact.  Why is this the primary issue?  What on earth does the pact have to do with it?  And people keep talking about how did this happen.  Seriously?  I know how it happens.  They know how it happens.  I wish they all would read Self-Reliance by R.W. Emerson and have a conversation. 

You can watch the interview below.  You may not even be able to count how many times she called these teen mothers, children.  You would think she is talking about premenstrual, pre-puberty humans who cannot cross the street without supervision.  Oh, let me assure you, they know how to cross the street. 

What is interesting to me is who are these 17 souls that insisted on incarnating  in Gloucester and being raised by young adults who are infantilized themselves?  Now they had the pact.  They came in together.  Their story is the one I want to know.

Get Ready Ladies!

Count me in. Count on me.

I know some women who love Hillary are talking about voting for McCain.  Some women I LOVE, who love Hillary, are talking about voting for McCain.  I just don't believe it.  All of us want the Democrats to control the Legislative Branch and influence the Judicial Branch.  All of us want reproductive autonomy, equal wages, the ERA and representation in our governing bodies across the nation.      

I believe with all my heart that progressive women and men will guard the advances we have made by swiftly and easily defeating John McCain.  In the mean time, I am thrilled to read, hear and feel feminists uniting, as I remember in 1982.  I agree; I want every vote counted.  Count me in.  Count on me.  It will be a landslide for progress.

Maybe this is not new, but it is all in one place and really easy to watch.  Please give it a click and know the facts; Senator John McCain has a ZERO PERCENT voting record with the issues that Planned Parenthood supports.  And please send this link forward.

Your Love is Showing

I sat here this AM, as I would guess many of you did, watching Senator Clinton give the speech that filled our hearts with love for the Women's Movement, our legacy, her work and OUR bright future as American Women.  Here are a couple of my favorite lines:

• “You can be so proud that from now on it will be …, unremarkable to think that a woman can be president of the United states and that is truly remarkable.”
• "If we can blast 50 women into space, we put a woman in the White House."
  "The glass ceiling got about 18 million cracks in it."   
• "Every moment looking back keeps us from moving forward"

To all of my older sisters, you paved this road.  Your unflappable requirement that humanity recognize gender equality made this moment happen.  To all of my younger sisters, you were at the reading of the will and now the legacy is yours; handle it with care, strength and the desire to make it spread to a point of being natural.  I am so proud today to be an American woman.

Then, in my email inbox, from a friend this arrived ~ Your Whiteness is Showing; Open Letter to White Women Threatening to Not Support Obama.  by Tim Wise.  Here is the opening,

This is an open letter to those white women who, despite their proclamations of progressivism, and supposedly because of their commitment to feminism, are threatening to withhold support from Barack Obama in November. You know who you are.

First, for those of you threatening to actually vote for John McCain and to oppose Senator Obama, or to stay home in November and thereby increase the likelihood of McCain winning and Obama losing (despite the fact that the latter's policy platform is virtually identical to Clinton's while the former's clearly is not), all the while claiming to be standing up for women...
MORE....

My response

I am white.  I am fat.  I am almost 60.  I am a Democrat.  I am a Feminist.
None of these words are a negative.
My whiteness, my fat, my age, my party, my feminism is showing.
As well as my conscience.

To say my whiteness is showing, as if whiteness is a pejorative is not right.  I am not ashamed of my race.  It is simply a fact  -  like my height or shoe size.  It is behavior which is subject to scrutiny and, even then, labels serve no purpose but to dramatize and routinize difference with no bridges. 

I love color.  I love aging.  I love. 
That is all that matters.
I hope one day, people will say, “Your love is showing.”   

Nothing's Changed, Actually ~ Tho I had hoped It Would

For many months now, I have been thinking about the Hillary sticker on my car window.  It is as if the longer it would be there, the more assured her presidency.  Do I have to look for a razor blade today?  I suppose.  I am the, THE demographic; a white woman, college graduate, in a nice neighborhood, a reasonable car and almost 60.  In my imagination, people will look and think I am addlepated leaving it on when, in fact, I am resistant and conscious of what might have been. 

And now I am faced with having to make a switch.  I feel like someone is asking me to be straight.  After years as a lesbian and many more identifying as a bi-sexual, how can they be asking me to be straight again?  I am a bigot; I want women to run the world.  Yes, progressive women, to be sure, but women nonetheless.  It was so close, here in the most violent country on earth, where we need it more than ever. 

My personal history was that I awoke to the civil rights movement before the women’s movement.  I am thinking that I am going to have to reach deep into my heart-story and remember who I was in 1968, protesting, marching, booing George Wallace, wearing a Humphrey button, the DNC in Chicago, Kent State, etc.  The Democratic nominee being a Black man would have been revolutionary, exciting and a dream come true.  It would have been before reading Friedan, before De Beauvoir, before Abbott & Love, before Sisterhood Bookstore, before Roe, before my first abortion, before my first lesbian kiss, before joining NOW, before truly understanding what it means that women are not in the US Constitution, before Houston, before Beijing – before I became me really.
 
So I will scrape the Hillary sticker off my Honda.  I will vote for the Democratic nominee and I will get back to work and do what I do everyday; everything and anything I can do to be of service to the American Women’s Movement.   

As I wrote a year ago ~

For me, tomorrow, nothing is going to change.
Tomorrow I will do what I do everyday.

I wake up, I get out of bed and work to advance women.
I do it with my blog
I do it with demonstrations
I do it promoting the ERA
I do it protesting oppression

Tomorrow I will do what I do everyday.

I will buy and read every book I can afford on feminism.
I will crawl the web for every item that is by ~ for or about women.
I will encourage every female to be all she can be and to exceed even her own expectation.

Tomorrow I will do what I do everyday.

Fundamentally, for me, tomorrow nothing is going to change.
Tomorrow I will do what I do everyday.