A lot’s been said recently about: (clarion call for emphasis) “The War On Women”. Then things taper off until it’s mistaken as to whether we’re involved in a cease-fire or a capitulation by one side or the other. It seems more a bi-partisan effort by each ideologically crippled entity to capture, control and constrain the efforts of the other party to harness the being most responsible for human forward momentum. That human being is a woman.
Liberals want equality in pay and status for women in the workplace. But, if a woman defines her workplace as being as a homemaker and mother then she’s depicted and insulted by the liberal element as not living up to her potential. When women say they want procreative rights and to determine the development of their lifestyles and sexuality, conservatives interject their opinionated religious beliefs into the conversation. Both sides become restrictive and judgmental concerning matters not even remotely a matter of their business. All this rhetoric’s driven by partisan politics and NOT by individual conscience.
I learned a long time ago woman is NOT the weaker sex. If you don’t believe it guys, I suggest you enjoy the “wonder of natural childbirth” and see if the human race advances. In addition to all of this, I’d suggest we as men take a serious look at what women put up with from us as much as we marvel at the intricacies involved in female enacted logic and problem solving.
This whole issue is less about either party warring against women as it is stockpiling an arsenal. This arsenal consists of women and their personal wants, drives and beliefs as to how they may accomplish their goals in life. Where it all becomes controversial is when one party tries leveraging those “personal wants, drives and beliefs” against the opposing party. It becomes a matter of which Betty Friedan or Gloria Steinem liberal principle will supersede the conservative argument delivered by a Phyllis Schlafly or Michelle Bachmann.
You can’t have war without two willing participants; those participants are the Democrats and the Republicans. The women are the people toward whom the collateral damage is delivered. As in all political discourse, there are speakers and there are listeners. It falls to the more erudite and mellifluous to deliver the message. Soap boxes abound.
Unfortunately, when lines are drawn as boundaries and the ink is dribbled onto the centerline to lighten into one shade of gray or another until the whitened purity of the field is developed on one end and the opposite purity is produced in its universal blackness; every woman involved stand somewhere in the gray. And, nobody really engages those female warriors in the middle.
They talk at them but don’t listen to any theory in controversy to their own at any time. The generals in this war stand firmly on the solid white border or the solid black border and shout at the opposition. Never do they poll the female constituency by nation-wide voter referendum. Never do they seek the voice of the women. The parties decide the tune to be danced to and the manner the art will be realized. If Democrats prescribe a Jitterbug they demand all dance to the Jitterbug. If Republicans command a Tango then they expect all to Tango.
When will women (taking the Tea Party as an example only in the sense they’ll use their own thought processes and distance themselves from the strictures of partisan politics) develop their own platforms, not planks in somebody else’s agenda, and step to the forefront of this debate and simply say – THAT’S ENOUGH ALREADY!
When will the female populace stand and demand to be counted as people and not as a loosely defined issue to be used as a cudgel to beat the other side with at any given moment for effect. I’d suggest the two parties get their stuff together before the ages old statement again comes true: “If Momma ain’t happy; ain’t nobody happy!”
When that statement becomes back into play on the political front as it did during the suffrage years, things will change dramatically.
Thanks for listening
