Response to Gloria Steinem By Roni Bell Sylvester 9/11/08
Yes Gloria, you are succinct and intelligent. Most ideologues are. What you say though, is so disconnected from ladies like Sarah Palin that I wonder out loud if we are indeed both of the female gender and live in the same America.
Women including you, Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, Diane Feinstein and Arianna Huffington, exclude ladies including Sarah Palin and those posting on
www.GetterDoneGals.Blogspot.com from their defined world of women.
Because you don't know us?Some philosophers tend to ignore our female segment of society too. I've never figured out if their exclusion of us is born out of deliberation, arrogance or stupidity.To help better know the rest of us gals, please study my introduction of the Sarah Palin-getter- done-type-gals in America.
Getter Done Gals come mostly from backgrounds closely connected to ranching, farming, fishing, logging and fuel production. In other words, they're the gals who provide the food we eat, fiber we use to clothe ourselves, and fuel that serves a myriad of purposes.
The two main elements most resource providers are forced to deal with on a minute by minute basis are: Mother Nature and their city, county, state, and federal governments, and foreign control agents including environmental, European Union and North America Union.One oft times hears non-resource providers describe these ladies in phrases including: "Walk like they're kicking s_ _ t off their shoes; hicks; clodhoppers; rednecks; hayseeds; unsophisticated; back-woods; cowboy; Walmart groupies; animal killing pistol packing mammas.
"In a single day it's common for us to: Cook for 50 wranglers, pull a calf, shoot a coyote, drive the not so glamourous farm truck miles into town to get parts-meet with the banker-get medicine for the horses and husband, teach a child another piano lesson and more manners, counsel a neighbor whose spouse got killed in a machinery accident, and rope and doctor a sick steer all while keeping coffee and prayers perking. We don't have the luxury of being rigidly stuck in some partisan feminist ideology.
Their livelihood and your food supply depends on an amazing flexibility - necessary to swiftly change course according to what Mother Nature or the many governments throw their way. Mother Nature and the charging bull care not about feelings, nor do they apologize for flooding out the corn field or snapping your leg in half.We love being parents.
We recognize it's an honorable undertaking and assume the responsibilities that go with it. We know the difference between "wanting" and "needing" something. And with our own hard-earned dollar, we pay for our wants and needs.For example, if we want a dog, we know full well what we're getting into before bringing one home. This is in stark contrast to the women who want such as prairie rats, feral horses and wolves, but expect...no demand...that we take full care of them.
Yes, far too often, the wants of other woman takes away from critical things we need to do. Gloria, you publically pound the hammer of reproductive freedom. Good God you make it sound as though any woman who gets pregnant is automatically a victim in need of government aid.
To affirmatively empower a woman, you teach your little girl the value of saying NO until she's first done these things and in this order: Get an education. Get a job. Get married to a gentleman who has an education and is employed. Then have a baby. A woman really does have the power. The power to say NO. Then they have the power to teach their little girl to respect herself and little boys, and teach her little boy how to respect himself and little girls.
We recognize life throws us extenuating circumstances. It's just that we'd rather the government not add to those extenuating circumstances with their choking controls, regs, restrictions and scoldings from socialists.We believe in order for this country to get healthy, we must educate every child on the importance of being engaged, active parents, and maintaining sturdy families.
You will find some of the last reservoirs of strong, healthy families in rural communities where we embrace matriarchies. Something that you could focus on is protecting these great families.We do our own homework, and find out the truth and facts on stuff like the global warming myth. We refuse to worship false religions like the Religion of Eco-fascism or false gods like Al Gore.
We've requested debate on matters like the global warming myth, but Mr. Gore informs us that his word is the last!From 1st grade on, schools should teach the honest economics of having a child. That would be a non-emotional, more effective way to deter unplanned pregnancies than sex education. I guarantee that!
Instead of providing condoms, schools should bring back the absolute of, "you break it, you pay for it!"It was appalling to read AP reports shouting, "Sarah Palin's 17 year old daughter has an unwanted pregnancy." Unwanted? No. Unplanned?
Yes.Surely you're smart enough not to believe anything AP reporters conjure these days. Like Move-on.org and Daily Kos they are rarely accurate and as useless as tits on a boar. The feminist movement in their zeal to banish her from the community is about as forward-thinking as my community was 47 years back, when they removed a local minister when his 17 year old daughter got pregnant out of wedlock.
Although there's far more to say on this subject, let me just stop here by saying - we forgive you and other women who can't relate to us; for we alone are guilty of being too occupied feeding, clothing and sheltering you all, to grandstand our deeds.Wouldn't you agree that what America deserves to see, is a good old-fashioned duel between your troupe and Getter Done Gals like Harriet Hageman, Kimmi Lewis, Sarah Palin, Cory Rutledge, Rita Meyer and so on? Ladies Senator Salazar has never heard of.
Roni Bell SylvesterP.O. Box La Salle, CO 80645
PS For your convenience - Steinem's column follows.
Palin: wrong woman, wrong message Sarah Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Hillary Clinton.
She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger. By Gloria Steinem> September 4, 2008: Here's the good news: Women have become so politically powerful that> even the anti-feminist right wing -- the folks with a headlock on the Republican Party -- are trying to appease the gender gap with a> first-ever female vice president.
We owe this to women -- and to many> men too -- who have picketed, gone on hunger strikes or confronted> violence at the polls so women can vote.
We owe it to Shirley Chisholm,> who first took the "white-male-only" sign off the White House, and to> Hillary Rodham Clinton, who hung in there through ridicule and misogyny> to win 18 million votes.> >
But here is even better news: It won't work. This isn't the first time a> boss has picked an unqualified woman just because she agrees with him> and opposes everything most other women want and need.
Feminism has> never been about getting a job for one woman. It's about making life> more fair for women everywhere. It's not about a piece of the existing> pie; there are too many of us for that. It's about baking a new pie.> >
Selecting Sarah Palin, who was touted all summer by Rush Limbaugh, is no> way to attract most women, including die-hard Clinton supporters. Palin> shares nothing but a chromosome with Clinton.
Her down-home, divisive> and deceptive speech did nothing to cosmeticize a Republican convention> that has more than twice as many male delegates as female, a> presidential candidate who is owned and operated by the right wing and a> platform that opposes pretty much everything Clinton's candidacy stood for -- and that Barack Obama's still does.
To vote in protest for> McCain/Palin would be like saying, "Somebody stole my shoes, so I'll> amputate my legs."> > This is not to beat up on Palin. I defend her right to be wrong, even on> issues that matter most to me. I regret that people say she can't do the> job because she has children in need of care, especially if they> wouldn't say the same about a father.
I get no pleasure from imagining> her in the spotlight on national and foreign policy issues about which> she has zero background, with one month to learn to compete with Sen.> Joe Biden's 37 years' experience.> > Palin has been honest about what she doesn't know.
When asked last month> about the vice presidency, she said, "I still can't answer that question> until someone answers for me: What is it exactly that the VP does every> day?" When asked about Iraq, she said, "I haven't really focused much on> the war in Iraq." She was elected governor largely because the incumbent was unpopular, and she's won over Alaskans mostly by using unprecedented oil wealth to> give a $1,200 reba te to every resident.
Now she is being praised by McCain's campaign as a tax cutter, despite the fact that Alaska has no> state income or sales tax. Perhaps McCain has opposed affirmative action for so long that he doesn't know it's about inviting more people to meet> standards, not lowering them. Or perhaps McCain is following the Bush administration habit, as in the Justice Department, of putting a job candidate's views on "God, guns and gays" ahead of competence.
The difference is that McCain is filling a job one 72-year-old heartbeat away from the presidency. So let's be clear: The culprit is John McCain. He may have chosen Palin out of change-envy, or a belief that women can't tell the difference between form and content, but the main motive was to please right-wing ideologues; the same ones who nixed anyone who is now or ever has been a supporter of reproductive freedom.
If that were not the case, McCain could have chosen a woman who knows what a vice president does and who> has thought about Iraq; someone like Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison or Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine. McCain could have taken a baby step away> from right-wing patriarchs who determine his actions, right down to> opposing the Violence Against Women Act.
Palin's value to those patriarchs is clear: She opposes just about every issue that women support by a majority or plurality. She believes that creationism should be taught in public schools but disbelieves global warming; she opposes gun control but supports government control of women's wombs; she opposes stem cell research but approves "abstinence-only" programs, which increase unwanted births, sexually transmitted diseases and abortions; she tried to use taxpayers' millions for a state program to shoot wolves from the air but didn't spend enough money to fix a state school system with the lowest high-school graduation rate in the nation; she runs with a candidate who oppos es the Fair Pay Act but supports $500 million in subsidies for a natural gas pipeline across Alaska; she supports drilling in the Arctic National> Wildlife Reserve, though even McCain has opted for the lesser evil of offshore drilling. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.
I don't doubt her sincerity. As a lifetime member of the National Rifle Assn., she doesn't just support killing animals from helicopters, she> does it herself. She doesn't just talk about increasing the use of fossil fuels but puts a coal-burning power plant in her own small town. She doesn't just echo McCain's pledge to criminalize abortion by overturning Roe vs. Wade, she says that if one of her daughters were impregnated by rape or incest, she should bear the child.
She not only opposes reproductive freedom as a human right but implies that it dictates abortion, without saying that it also protects the right to have a child. So far, the major new Mc Cain supporter that Palin has attracted is James Dobson of Focus on the Family.
Of course, for Dobson, "women are merely waiting for their husbands to assume leadership," so he may be voting for Palin's husband. Being a hope-a-holic, however, I can see two long-term bipartisan gains from this contest.
Republicans may learn they can't appeal to right-wing patriarchs and most women at the same time. A loss in November could cause the centrist majority of Republicans to take back their party, which was the first to support the Equal Rights Amendment and should be the last to want to invite government into the wombs of women. And American women, who suffer more because of having two full-time jobs than from any other single injustice, finally have support on a national stage from male leaders who know that women can't be equal outside the home until men are equal in it .
Barack Obama and Joe Biden are campaigning on their belief that men should be, can be and want to be at home for their children. This could be huge Gloria Steinem is an author, feminist organizer and co-founder of the Women's Media Center. She supported Hillary Clinton and is now supporting Barack Obama.
