Gender struck...

A fascinating piece came across a bitch’s computer screen a while back. A bitch set it aside because my de-smokified brain was having some issues digesting it…but I woke up this morning and the topic of women in politics was top of mind again.

The news that the United States of America ranks 68th in the world when it comes to female representation in national parliaments is a motherfucking shame.

We’re not even talking about evaluating America on women elected to the highest office of the land.

Don’t get me started.

Lawd have mercy.

Sigh.

No, a bitch is talking about women elected to national parliaments…which would be our House of Representatives and Senate.

Gender Struck...
Y’all, I can’t tell you how many times a group of women have related their frustration with an elected official only to dismiss the notion of a woman being able to do the same job.

It hasn’t gone back to that…it never really left that.

Decades of anti-feminist propaganda have resulted in a gender-based version of color struck behavior.

Mmmhmmm.

My Grandmother, Gawd rest her soul, was color struck beyond all repair. She used to sit around and talk about how white folks hair was 'good' hair…how lucky so and so was because her child was born light…how we all needed to stay out of the sun lest we get darker. This view was the result of her having grown up in and era of anti-black propaganda. Dark was evil…fair was pure…lighter complexion having blacks were more socially accepted…dark blacks were subject to more abuse. She came of age in 1920’s Mississippi and the lines were sharp as hell.

But I didn’t realize how far her color struckness went until Jesse Jackson ran for President in the early 1980’s. My father was active in the campaign, so our family was all up on the shit. But my Grandmother was beyond dismissive of Jackson’s run.

Now, if she had been against Jackson’s campaign because of a policy stand she disagreed with that would have been one thing. My Grandmother was a wise woman and educated as well. She could have denounced Jackson on policy…but she didn’t. She denounced his run for President at face value…literally. There simply was no way a black man could be more qualified than a white man.

Years later I would wonder at the impact this self hatred had on my Mother and Aunts. How did it impact their perception of self…of their prospects…of their place in the world?

And thoughts of my beloved Grandmother came to mind when I read the news that America was failing badly in gender diversity in elected office.

It’s not a direct comparison, but rather a curiously similar execution.

Watching Laura Bush gaze adoringly at her husband…listening to Condi Rice vehemently defend Bush…suffering through Ann Coulter defending anything conservative, white and male…all of that layers on and honestly is sad as hell.

A bitch doesn’t even like those women.

Jesus!

But why the hell are they propping up some sorry assed excuse for a developed mind rather than taking the lead and executing flawed policy better than he ever thought to execute flawed policy (wink)?

Why stand three steps behind him?

Sigh.

Well, I have come to the conclusion that some women are gender struck.

And it must end. You have to run to not get elected! And you have to not get elected to illuminate the real reason why folks don’t want to vote for women.

So, a bitch is sending out a call to action.

Don’t support Hillary? Fine. But don’t hide behind some gender struck bullshit that she’s unelectable because she is a woman. She’s unelectable because she won’t pass the Democratic Primary litmus test, jumped the gun by pandering off key and out of step to the conservative right two years out and appears unprincipled on core liberal values…and that’s about policy not biology.

Can’t find anyone running worth your vote? That’s your call to run! And that goes for all y’all. Get your minority ass up, file the paperwork and hit the streets!

Get to it and a bitch will join you.

Because a representative democracy with lacks diversity isn’t a representative democracy.

The glass ceiling doesn’t disappear just because you stopped kicking at it…