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Women’s Rights?

Sophie Lynne | Mar 19, 2012

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This column is political. Most people know where my politics lie — I’m a liberal. I’m not a socialist, a communist, or any other of the hate terms the right likes to label those of us on the Left. I am a tax paying American citizen, and a member of the 99% (meaning I’m not filthy rich.) My politics are defined by the idea that “We the People” doesn’t mean “every man for himself,” that corporations are NOT people, and that we should treat each other as human beings. So, fair warning: what follows is a history lesson followed by my take on today’s situation. And unlike Rush et al, I am going to document my sources so you know I’m not making any of these horror stories up. This piece is my opinion alone and does not reflect the opinions of TGForum, its publisher, or its editor. Just me.

As the world knows, it’s an election year here in the U.S. And as most people know, one of the parties has lately been doing a lot of hate stoking against women. Oh, they’re calling it everything but that, but the truth is hard to hide when the party’s mouthpiece spews misogynistic hate for three straight days. Oh wait he’s just an “entertainer.” What sort of person would be entertained by that hate speech? Only a certain brand of Republican.

Kind of like all the code words that party has for our President’s race. In fact, exactly like that.

A bit of selective history is in order: Selective because massive tomes have been written on this subject. Let’s start in the 20th century.

In the U.S., the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920. This guaranteed women the right to vote. Before this, they had no voice politically. That said, while 66% of women are registered to vote, only 46% of women vote. (1)

In Germany, December 1935, Heinrich Himmler, head of Hitler’s SS, started a program called “Lebensborn,” literally “fountain of life.” The idea here was to offer women who were racially “pure” the chance to give birth to a child in secret at SS nurseries, furnished in furniture looted from the homes of rich Jews deported to concentration camps. Soon, these nurseries became places where the women would be bred with high ranking SS officers. Soon, Himmler would order all SS officers to father as many children as possible, in and out of wedlock. His plan was to breed the next generation of the Master Race. Other children with “Aryan” features were kidnapped from conquered countries to be “Germanized.” By the end of the program, at least 8,500 children were born in these places. Women were just birthing factories. Well kept, but just walking baby factories. But that was a fascist state, right?

Let’s skip forward a bit.

In 1972, the US Congress passed the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). The basis of this was simple: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.”(2) The idea was that both genders are equal under the law. Radical idea, right?

The ERA died in 1982, under Reagan, when not enough states ratified it.

“Arguments by ERA opponents such as Phyllis Schlafly, right-wing leader of the Eagle Forum/STOP ERA, played on the same fears that had generated female opposition to woman suffrage. Anti-ERA organizers claimed that the ERA would deny a woman’s right to be supported by her husband, privacy rights would be overturned, women would be sent into combat, and abortion rights and homosexual marriages would be upheld.” (3)

Does that argument sound vaguely familiar?

How about another area of discrimination — in the paycheck. “Women earned 59% of the wages men earned in 1963; in 2008 they earned 77% of men’s wages — an improvement of about half a penny per dollar earned every year.” (4) In 2010, it was 81.2%. The numbers are worse for non-white women. (5)

So, women doing the SAME WORK get paid significantly less. This is despite the Equal Pay Act of 1963 when it became illegal to pay women lower rates for the same job strictly on the basis of their sex. (6)

On January 29, 2009, the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act was the first law signed by newly inaugurated President Obama. (7)

You know — the one that the GOP accuses of being a do nothing socialist.

“The bill amends the Civil Rights Act of 1964 stating that the 180 -day statute of limitations for filing an equal-pay lawsuit regarding pay discrimination resets with each new discriminatory paycheck. The law was a direct answer to the Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., 550 U.S. 618 (2007), a U.S. Supreme Court decision holding that the statute of limitations for presenting an equal-pay lawsuit begins on the date that the employer makes the initial discriminatory wage decision, not at the date of the most recent paycheck, as a lower court had ruled.” (8)

Okay, so women are taking MAJOR steps toward equality, right? I mean, they are 50.8 percent of the population (9), so you’d think that in the 21st century, Equality would be a given, right?

Now it’s 2012, and the GOP candidates are doing their absolute best to roll back women’s rights to something from the 1800s, and they’re doing it while insulting and degrading women. Do I really need to repeat all of Santorum, Romney, and Limbaugh’s words?

Santorum has written in his 2005 book that he condemns feminists. “Respect for stay-at-home mothers has been poisoned by a toxic combination of the village elders’ war on the traditional family and radical feminism’s misogynistic crusade to make working outside the home the only marker of social value and self-respect.’’(10)

And:

“Radical feminists have been making the pitch that justice demands that men and women be given an equal opportunity to make it to the top in the workplace.”(11)

In other words, a woman’s place is in the home — barefoot and pregnant. A walking baby factory. Know thy place.

Now . . . ready for the scariest part of all this?

This is all against GENETIC WOMEN. That’s right.

If the GOP hates GENETIC women with this much passion, if they are throwing all these resources to deny GENETIC women rights, what would they do to TRANS-women? It’s not like we have a huge list of allies to begin with, nor a lot of rights supposedly guaranteed under the Constitution.

We are being murdered at a rate SEVENTEEN times greater than the regular population. (12) Think of that.

“Ninety percent of transgender and gender nonconforming people report harassment, discrimination and mistreatment on the job, and the injustices they face have devastating economic and personal consequences, according to a new survey.

A “staggering” 41 percent of the more than 6,400 respondents said they had attempted suicide, compared to a rate of 1.6 percent for the general population, according to the survey (PDF) by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the National Center for Transgender Equality.” (13)

90% get harassed, and that’s NOW. Imagine if one of these misogynistic monsters gets elected. Santorum’s own hatred of LGBT people is already legendary and well documented. Can anyone believe things for Trans-people will improve with him being elected?

Okay, keeping ALL of these documented facts in mind . . .

Why would any Trans-person in their right mind vote Republican?

The only possible reason I can think of is either pure racism or that they have been totally brainwashed by the GOP propaganda as disseminated by their noise machine (Fox News, Limbaugh, etc.) A master of propaganda has been attributed as saying “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” (14) Dr. Goebbels would be proud of how his principles have been applied today, especially in the country which helped destroy his work.

If we as trans-people have a prayer of continuing our fight for human rights, we need to defeat the GOP. Is President Obama perfect? Hell no! But he has done far more for us than any other president AND set the economy back on course.

It’s up to all of us to decide what is truly important to us, and vote that way. You know how I’m voting.