Votes For Women

 This one starts with a confession: I almost didn't go to vote.  Gasp! I know.  I am very ashamed of myself for being so lazy and entitled and well, apathetic. The good thing is that I did go this morning (no lines) but I understand why turnout is so bad when it seems so critical that we be out there voting.

In my defense, I just moved and I am exhausted.  If you haven't moved in awhile, don't.  Just stay where you are, or leave everything behind, especially any pets, for the new owners. I swear that the next time I move, I am seeing what will fit in my big hiking backpack and that is all I will take with me.  You know what won't fit in there?  Baskets.  I don't know how I became the owner of so many ugly and non-functional baskets, but while I was moving three years ago, I stood in my garage with a friend who said "Lose some of these baskets."  And I did, but I still had a ridiculous number of unseemly baskets to lose this time as well.  

I am physically exhausted from heaving boxes and climbing stairs.  I am emotionally exhausted trying to remember why the hell I have so many baskets as well as culling my kid's childhood memories.  I decided that the Valentine's container made from a milk jug about 13 years ago wasn't moving but I cried as I put it in the dumpster.  I am also truly just tired because cats are assholes and they didn't take the move well; hiding and yowling all night long.  It is like having a newborn and, friends, I am way too old to have a newborn.

So moving tired plus working with apathetic teens put me in this place where I knew voting was happening, where I was liking people's statuses about voting, but never made me feel like I needed to go do it myself.  (Don't worry; I also hate myself as I reread that). And maybe my Zoloft is too high and I am not feeling as passionate as I should be about the state of the nation and world, but if it wasn't this high, I probably could not do this job every day.  What a modern-day dilemma!

This morning though, as I sat watching the news and seeing the voting coverage, the guilt and shame settled in.  Not so much that I was frozen or indifferent, but enough that I started to think.  I thought about the clip from Iron-Jawed Angels that I show each year that has Hilary Swank as Alice Paul being force-fed in prison.  For wanting to vote.  Force-fed in prison for wanting to vote and here I was on my comfortable couch, sipping coffee, and trying to see if I had time before work to go because I didn't want to end up standing in a line.  (yep, hating myself again.)

As I teach and preach each year, these women sacrificed so very much. They faced so much vitriol and hate and persecution, yet they stood.  They marched.  They chanted.  They kept the fires going in front of the White House.  They sat through prison.  They endured torture.  They did this for us.  

If you are sitting on your couch, hating yourself because you also have been lost in life and haven't gone, it's okay.  Shake off the guilt and go.  Early voting til 7pm tonight and voting all day on Tuesday.  We don't have time for guilt.  Just acknowledge that life is exhausting, carve out 10 minutes somewhere, and go vote.  Vote for yourself and for your daughters, but really, you are also voting for them.

Speak Loudly and Carry a Big Stick

Did you ever read something and as you are reading it think “Wait, am I really reading this?”  That was me this morning as I read this article from the Austin American Statesman entitled “As women take majority on City Council, staff warned to expect more questions, longer talks”.  Read full article here.  I’m sorry, warned?  Is this like a storm warning or a tornado warning?  Run!  Take cover!  Women on City Council!  AHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

Apparently, Austin City Council is now comprised of 7 women and 4 men.  The City Manager’s office felt this was such a change from business as normal that they called in some experts to speak on “how to talk to a female-dominated City Council”.  Experts on how to speak to women.  Again, I’m sorry, but are we running a city or trying to date each other?  It’s business people.  Just business.  Man, woman, black, white, mixed.  It. Is. Business.

Feeling my anger?  Wait, because it only gets better.  They fly in a guy from Florida to talk about working with women and his first bullet point is that “Women ask a lot of questions”.  How did he glean this factual information?  He got this first hand from listening to his 11 year old daughter and then applying it to women he worked with.  He says that his daughter asked him a lot of questions on the way to a game and he had to patiently reply to them.  Dad of the year material right here!!  He goes on to say women are less likely to read agenda information and ask questions instead and how he applies the patience he learned from being a Dad to the women he works with as well.  Wait!  Forget Dad of the year, this man is a TRUE humanitarian. 

Mad yet?  Hold on, you'll love this.  His next point is that women don’t like to deal with numbers.  I myself hate math but to say women don’t like to deal with numbers?  I am now boiling over and I hope you are as well.  A man today, in the year 2015, is saying something akin to “don’t worry your pretty little head with this man stuff” and we are PAYING him to say this!! Don’t anyone tell AISD.  Their CFO is a woman!!  A woman! And she is in charge of numbers and money and stuff.

Finally, this Mensa member concludes with if Hillary Clinton is elected that women will take over everywhere.  There will women be in charge from the bottom to the top he claims, so boys, better behave.  Watch what you say, use your nice words and however much you might want to Don Draper your secretary, you better not.  Once Hillary is in, she will make women in charge of everything and your days as top dog are over.  Actually, I am sure once she is in all men will be fitted with a tracking device, pumped full of Soma and exist only to fulfill our every desire.  That is what her campaign is being built around, right?  Forget a chicken in every pot; we are going to have a woman in every leadership role throughout the country!

The author of this article interviews a woman who studies gender issues and is a professor at McCombs Business School at UT.  Two women talking?  Can you imagine all the questions that they asked each other?  I hope that no numbers were involved without a man being there to help them out.  This professor very kindly refutes the nonsense our so-called woman expert prattled on about.  I really was too angry to read anymore and just skimmed the rest of it.  I couldn’t let it go and printed it out at work and have shocked, appalled and angered the other women I work with too.  The fact that the City of Austin flew this yahoo here to talk about working with women and then labeled it as training and made city staff attend absolutely boggles my mind.  I cannot imagine being a city employee and having to listen to that drivel. I really don’t think I would have made it past his opening remark.  I would have yelled “sic semper tyrannis” and rushed the stage.   

I recently worked with a small group of students reviewing US History.  All of those kids can tell you what the 19^th Amendment changed because I was pretty passionate about explaining it and basically told them they had to remember it.  (Those of you who don’t know, first of all shame on you, second it was votes for women)  

March on sisters!

Every week I would ask them my favorite amendment and every week they would laugh and say “19^th.”  When I read articles like the one that has me all fired up today, I realize we need to be teaching them more than the 19^th amendment.  We need to be teaching our kids, and especially our girls, how we are still fighting; we may have gotten our vote, but that almost a hundred years later, we are still struggling to be heard.  I wish that everyone would join me in the 21^st century and realize that we are all equal.  We are all just people who have our strengths and our weaknesses, but that those strength and weaknesses come from our personality, not our gender. 

Works Cited

Rockwell, Lilly. "As Women Take Majority on Austin City Council, Staff Warned to Expect More Questions, Longer Talks." Cityhall.blog.statesman.com. Austin American Statesman, 12 May 2015. Web. 13 May 2015.