Republicans have been doing bad in elections with women. Thus the war on women. This post is a quick overview just to see how the game is played.
Related Book: The Republican War Against Women: An Insider's Report from Behind the Lines
In 1980, Republicans used appeals to sexist and racist bigotry to win the Presidency. The party adopted an electoral strategy that included getting votes by playing on the fear and uncertainty engendered by the civil rights and women's political movements, and continued to use this strategy in the campaigns of 1984, 1988, and 1992. Under the Reagan and Bush administrations, this strategy became a crucial part of the party's governing policies. This book is not a political science treatise nor a description of political campaigns; it is a documented account of a grab for power that, as the years pass, continues to intensify antagonism between the sexes and to sow unnecessary division among the American people. As a longtime Republican activist and a delegate to the 1992 convention, Tanya Melich has observed these actions from within; and documents this takeover and the Party's ongoing practices (such as embracing the Christian right) in a devastating, factual, and often hair-raising report. A combination of history, exposÄ, reasoned polemic, and call to arms, this book has now been enriched by two completely new chapters that assesses the outcome of the 1996 election in terms of the book's thesis and realistically lays out the future: both in terms of what it will be if the right-wing elements of the Republican party continue to set the agenda, and how it can be changed if centrist women (and men) take charge of that agenda. The heart of such change lies with Independents, who now constitute a startling 39 percent of Americans (31 percent identify themselves as Democrats and 30 percent as Republicans). We are not a country of strong party loyalties, and the enormous growth of independents is the signal that change is not only possible but achievable. As a superb political pro, the author offers hardheaded strategies for such change.
As explained in my previous article, hunting cultures will often form into patriarchies. This doesn't mean that women didn't hunt. Just like I showed the Neanderthals were probably just humans, women were probably not just gatherers. Hunting is not that difficult. The pygmies often have women in their hunting groups. Also, to protect children why wouldn't you want strong men around? Obviously you would. If a big cat comes around you would want muscle. Throwing a spear with a group of people at a giraffe or buffalo doesn't require much muscle, so the 'women could not be hunters because they weren't strong enough' isn't a tenable hypothesis.
In short, our culture views ancient cave women like this...
When actually they were like this...
New Women of the Ice Age
Forget about hapless mates being dragged around by macho mammoth killers. The women of Ice Age Europe, it appears, were not mere cavewives but priestly leaders, clever inventors, and mighty hunters.
Recent anthropological research has revealed just how much Soffer’s colleagues overlooked. By observing women in the few remaining hunter-gatherer societies and by combing historical accounts of tribal groups more thoroughly, anthropologists have come to realize how critical the female half of the population has always been to survival. Women and children have set snares, laid spring traps, sighted game and participated in animal drives and surrounds—forms of hunting that endangered neither young mothers nor their offspring. They dug starchy roots and collected other plant carbohydrates essential to survival. They even hunted, on occasion, with the projectile points traditionally deemed men’s weapons. I found references to Inuit women carrying bows and arrows, especially the blunt arrows that were used for hunting birds, says Linda Owen, an archeologist at the University of Tübingen in Germany. The revelations triggered a volley of new research. In North America, Soffer and her team have found tantalizing evidence of the hunting gear often favored by women in historical societies. In Europe, archeobotanists are analyzing Upper Paleolithic hearths for evidence of plant remains probably gathered by women and children, while lithics specialists are poring over stone tools to detect new clues to their uses. And the results are gradually reshaping our understanding of Ice Age society. The famous Venus figurines, say archeologists of the new school, were never intended as male pornography: instead they may have played a key part in Upper Paleolithic rituals that centered on women. And such findings, pointing toward a more important role for Paleolithic women than had previously been assumed, are giving many researchers pause.
[Notice that what I referred to as the "fertility goddess" is here called the venus figurines. So, the previous explanations still apply.]
Of course, this isn't the first time women have fought...
Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America
Women of the Republic views the American Revolution through women's eyes. Previous histories have rarely recognized that the battle for independence was also a woman's war. The "women of the army" toiled in army hospitals, kitchens, and laundries. Civilian women were spies, fund raisers, innkeepers, suppliers of food and clothing. Recruiters, whether patriot or tory, found men more willing to join the army when their wives and daughters could be counted on to keep the farms in operation and to resist enchroachment from squatters. "I have Don as much to Carrey on the warr as maney that Sett Now at the healm of government," wrote one impoverished woman, and she was right.
Women of the Republic is the result of a seven-year search for women's diaries, letters, and legal records. Achieving a remarkable comprehensiveness, it describes women's participation in the war, evaluates changes in their education in the late eighteenth century, describes the novels and histories women read and wrote, and analyzes their status in law and society. The rhetoric of the Revolution, full of insistence on rights and freedom in opposition to dictatorial masters, posed questions about the position of women in marriage as well as in the polity, but few of the implications of this rhetoric were recognized. How much liberty and equality for women? How much pursuit of happiness? How much justice?
When American political theory failed to define a program for the participation of women in the public arena, women themselves had to develop an ideology of female patriotism. They promoted the notion that women could guarantee the continuting health of the republic by nurturing public-spirited sons and husbands. This limited ideology of "Republican Motherhood" is a measure of the political and social conservatism of the Revolution. The subsequent history of women in America is the story of women's efforts to accomplish for themselves what the Revolution did not.
Yet, look at the overview of the GOP's war on women by MoveOn.org...
Top 10 Shocking Attacks from the GOP's War on Women
1) Republicans not only want to reduce women's access to abortion care, they're actually trying to redefine rape. After a major backlash, they promised to stop. But they haven't yet. Shocker.
2) A state legislator in Georgia wants to change the legal term for victims of rape, stalking, and domestic violence to "accuser." But victims of other less gendered crimes, like burglary, would remain "victims."
3) In South Dakota, Republicans proposed a bill that couldmake it legal to murder a doctor who provides abortion care. (Yep, for real.)
4) Republicans want to cut nearly a billion dollars of food and other aid to low-income pregnant women, mothers, babies, and kids.
5) In Congress, Republicans have a bill that would let hospitals allow a woman to die rather than perform an abortion necessary to save her life.
6) Maryland Republicans ended all county money for a low-income kids' preschool program. Why? No need, they said.Women should really be home with the kids, not out working.
7) And at the federal level, Republicans want to cut that same program, Head Start, by $1 billion. That means over 200,000 kids could lose their spots in preschool.
8) Two-thirds of the elderly poor are women, and Republicans are taking aim at them too. A spending bill would cut funding for employment services, meals, and housing for senior citizens.
9) Congress just voted for a Republican amendment to cut all federal funding from Planned Parenthood health centers, one of the most trusted providers of basic health care and family planning in our country.
10) And if that wasn't enough, Republicans are pushing toeliminate all funds for the only federal family planning program. (For humans. But Republican Dan Burton has a bill to provide contraception for wild horses. You can't make this stuff up).
Here are some comedians offering their perspectives on news in the corporate media...
Notice: One side is arguing the health benefits and the other side is saying 'you're going to hell'... (also relevant: Fox News Lies)
Notice in the above video that a Republican WOMAN proposes a bill which is not just inappropriate but similar to State sanctioned rape(notice what Jon Stewart says at the end of the video) ... best part is this is perfectly consistent with the Republican war on women (see above extract from MoveOn.org).
Next...
See what Governor Bob McDonnell has to say at 3 minutes 50 seconds into the following video...
This is my favorite part....
All-MALE Panels to decide the fate of women...
Another example of all male panels...
Very Funny: A Parody of the all male decision panels on women's issues...
Moment of Zen
The Pope (a Catholic) came out in favor of universal healthcare...
The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive
No comments:
Post a Comment