war on women – Sheila Kennedy

About That War On Women…

When women point out that “pro life” legislation and Court decisions are really “anti-woman,” far too many men respond with verbal pats on the head. “Tut tut, little woman–don’t you think you are being a bit hysterical?

Well, it appears that Talking Points Memo has “brought the receipts.” The site has acquired a trove of documents from a secretive group aiming to restore White Christian heterosexual men to their “rightful” dominance.

A secret, men-only right-wing society with members in influential positions around the country is on a crusade: to recruit a Christian government that will form after the right achieves regime change in the United States, potentially via a “national divorce.”

It sounds like the stuff of fantasy, but it’s real. The group is called the Society for American Civic Renewal (the acronym is pronounced “sacker” by its members). It is open to new recruits, provided you meet a few criteria: you are male, a “trinitarian” Christian, heterosexual, an “un-hyphenated American,” and can answer questions about Trump, the Republican Party, and Christian Nationalism in the right way. One chapter leader wrote to a prospective member that the group aimed to “secure a future for Christian families.”

The documents spell out the aims and objectives of what TPM calls “a shadowy network occupying the commanding heights of business, politics, and culture, open only to a select, elite few, committed to reshaping the United States to align it with the group’s radical values. ”

The members of this all-male organization are all White, well-to-do, devout Christian traditionalists engaged in politics.

Until TPM began reporting this story several weeks ago, the membership of the group had remained largely secret. Its existence was known and has been previously reported on by The Guardian, but the details of the group’s mission, membership criteria, board, and internal communications remained outside of public view. Beginning late Thursday, some of the leading members of the group identified by TPM through our reporting came forward publicly to acknowledge their memberships in the organization and published an internal document that TPM had already obtained. They said they were doing so in anticipation of another story by The Guardian.

These aren’t the pathetic “Proud Boys,” assorted Incels, or other misfits we’ve come to expect. TPM identified members: the president of the Claremont Institute, several Harvard Law School graduates, and leading businessmen in communities scattered across America. (Evidently, the man who incorporated the group nationally is an “Indiana shampoo tycoon who refers to himself as “maximum leader” and blogs about Rhodesian anti-guerilla tactics and how the must-read dystopian fiction novel for white supremacists, The Camp of the Saints, is actually a vision of America’s present.”)

Group members hold a distinct vision of America as a latter-day ancient Rome: a crumbling, decadent empire that could soon be replaced by a Christian theocracy. To join, the group demands faithfulness, virtue, and “alignment,” which it describes as “deference to and acceptance of the wisdom of our American and European Christian forebears in the political realm, a traditional understanding of patriarchal leadership in the household, and acceptance of traditional Natural Law in ethics more broadly.” More practically, members must be able to contribute either influence, capability, or wealth in helping SACR further its goals.

“Most of all, we seek those who understand the nature of authority and its legitimate forceful exercise in the temporal realm,” a mission statement reads.

And of course, in the time-honored tradition of “follow the money,”

Once in the group, the statement says, members can expect perks: “direct preferential treatment for members, especially in business,” and help in advancement “in all areas of life” from other members.

The report–which you really do need to read in its entirety–traces how TPM uncovered the group’s existence and origins, and confirmed its core mission: “to create a mini-state within a state, composed entirely of Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox Christian men. It’s explicitly patriarchal, demanding that group members assume a dominant role at home, and celebrates the use of force and existence of authority.”

Two paragraphs ought to alarm any non-male, non-White, non-Christian, non-straight person who reads the extensive, linked report:

What sets SACR apart is that its members come from and are recruited from the upper crust of American society. They are wealthy — independent wealth is a requirement for membership, per documents TPM obtained. And they are credentialed.

SACR offers a redoubt for powerful people who take the culture war extremely seriously and believe in their bones that hemorrhaging church membership, the Obergefell decision on same-sex marriage, and the ebbing status of Christian men in American society are an existential threat to their vision for America, and who have the means to build a society on a different path.

Katie Britt would fit right in…..

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Speaking of the War on Women…

Social change almost always happens slowly and unevenly, and while it is occurring, people who were socialized into older worldviews must co-exist (uneasily) with those who have adopted the emerging paradigms.

I am old enough to have seen enormous changes in the way women participate in American society. With the exception of a brief period after high school and before marriage, my mother was a homemaker until my father’s death required her to enter the work force in her 60s. She was one of a legion of intelligent, talented women who should have had a career; she chafed as a housewife and was much happier after she went to work. Working for pay during the marriage, however, would have reflected poorly on my father’s ability to support his family, so like most of her middle-class peers, she stayed home.

Girls were supposed to be demure and decorative when I was growing up. I once overheard a cousin tell my mother “It’s nice that Sheila reads so much, since she’s unlikely to date. Boys like girls who are pretty, not smart.”

Later, when I went to law school, many “friends” let me know they were troubled by my choice; I had three young children, and according to the social mores of the time, my place was at home tending to them. I still remember people warning me that my children would all “do drugs” if I pursued a career–and I vividly recall a partner at the firm I joined (as the first woman ever hired) reassuring me that “There’s nothing wrong with being a woman. Why, we hired a man with a glass eye once!”

So–as the commercial says, we really have “come a long way, baby.” But as the “me too” movement, the persistence of the glass ceiling, and statistics about earning discrepancies all attest, we also have a long way to go.

In 2016, a substantial number of Americans didn’t find Trump’s taped admission of sexual assault reason to disqualify him from the Presidency–and a not-insignificant number of voters explicitly based their rejection of Hillary Clinton on her gender. (A friend of our handyman told me that some men he worked with had volunteered that they would never vote for a woman–any woman– because a woman simply couldn’t “handle” being President.)

Granted, few prominent Americans are as forthright about their misogyny as Philippine President Duarte, who recently boasted that he had ordered soldiers to shoot female communist guerrillas in the genitals.

“Tell the soldiers, ‘There’s a new order coming from the mayor,’ ” the president said in a speech, recalling a directive he said he had given when he was mayor of Davao City. “ ‘We will not kill you. We will just shoot you in the vagina.’ ”

Duterte has repeatedly expressed hostility to women in the country’s political insurgency, saying they should have stayed home and raised children.

Most American politicians avoid expressing anti-women sentiments quite so forcefully, but there are plenty of signs that similar underlying worldviews–ranging from “women should be submissive to men,” to “women should stay home with their children,” to “women really welcome male ‘attention’ and just say no in order to play hard to get”–remain ubiquitous.

These cultural attitudes are a holdover from times long past, when physical strength was needed for most jobs, and families had to have lots of children, both to help support the family and to replace the large numbers who died in infancy.

As any sociologist will confirm, longstanding cultural assumptions are slow to change. As any political scientist will attest, people who enjoy power or status rarely relinquish those privileged positions out of the goodness of their hearts.

When Obama was elected, we saw the depth and persistence of widespread racism that had largely gone underground. As women claim the right to participate in a workforce in which we are both fairly compensated and unmolested, we are encountering equally deep-seated paternalistic resistance.

That resistance will persist at least until the men (and women) glued to Fox News pass from the scene.

Or as I tell my students, once my age cohort is dead, things really should improve.

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Speaking of Abortion..

Yesterday’s blog ended with a question about the motives of the anti-abortion culture warriors. Although there are obviously many sincere people who have moral or religious objections to reproductive choice, the punitive measures advanced by many others (together with their utter lack of concern about what happens to the babies so “saved” once they are born) raises legitimate questions about their real agenda.

I’m not much for conspiracy theories; I tend to agree with a colleague from my days in city government who often remarked that incompetence explains so much more than conspiracies. But in this case, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that a fair number of the men who have staked out anti-abortion positions (and yes, they’re disproportionately male) aren’t as opposed to abortion as they are to women’s full equality. (Keep ’em barefoot and pregnant, like God intended…).

After all, if you are truly anti-abortion, you’d support programs that reduce the need for and incidence of abortion.

The New York Times recently reported on the GOP’s war on contraception and Planned Parenthood:

One would imagine that congressional Republicans, almost all of whom are on record as adamantly opposing abortion, would be eager to fund programs that help reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies.

That would be the common sense approach, anyway.

And yet since they took over the House in 2011, Republicans have been trying to obliterate the highly effective federal family-planning program known as Title X, which gives millions of lower-income and rural women access to contraception, counseling, lifesaving cancer screenings, and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases.

A House subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services has proposed to eliminate all Title X funding — about $300 million — from a 2016 spending bill.

The bill would also slash funding by up to 90 percent for sex education, specifically President Obama’s teen-pregnancy prevention initiative. The only winner was abstinence-only education, whose funding the subcommittee voted to double, despite the fact that it has basically no effect on abstinence and has been associated with higher rates of teen pregnancy.

Federal law prohibits the use of any federal dollars for abortion or abortion-related services, and has for many years. That inconvenient fact hasn’t prevented the “pro-life” posers from insisting that their efforts to eviscerate reproductive health programs serving poor women–programs that save the lives of many of those women–are “pro life.” Of course, they aren’t “pro” anything. They are anti-woman–and fiscally irresponsible.

What Title X grants actually do is help prevent unwanted pregnancies — more than one million in 2012, which translates to about 363,000 abortions avoided. According to the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization, every public dollar spent on family planning services saved about $7 in costs related to pregnancy, birth and infant care, as well as sexually transmitted diseases and cervical cancer. So the proposal to slash the program’s funding is not just inhumane, it’s also fiscally dumb.

A genuine opposition to abortion would require support for family planning programs that reduce abortions. A genuine concern for “life” would include concern for the lives of poor women. A genuine commitment to fiscal conservatism would mandate support for programs that demonstrably save tax dollars.

The operative word is “genuine.”

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Those Big, Bad, Trial Lawyers

Richard Mourdock and Mike Pence have been having some problems the past couple of days trying to downplay their enthusiastic participation in the GOP’s War on Women–explaining that they really, truly love female incubators…er, women. (We just need to remember why their God put us on this earth…)

So it may be timely to remind ourselves that the War on Women (and its attendant dishonesty) isn’t limited to matters of reproduction.

For example, I see where the Romney/Ryan ticket is explaining its lack of support for the Lilly Ledbetter Act by claiming the legislation isn’t really about equal pay for equal work. No sireee. It’s just an effort to enrich those awful, terrible, liberal trial lawyers.

A couple of days ago, on ABC, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), a leading Romney surrogate, argued, “[J]ust because they call a piece of legislation an equal pay bill doesn’t make it so. In fact, much of this legislation is, in many respects, nothing but an effort to help trial lawyers collect their fees and file lawsuits, which may not contribute at all whatsoever to increasing pay equity in the workplace.”

Paul Ryan, Romney’s running mate, said something very similar last week, criticizing the proposal as being little more than “opening up the lawsuits and statute of limitations.”

Romney allies have justified their opposition to the Lilly Ledbetter Act on these grounds for months. Pete Hoekstra, who is running for U.S. Senate in Michigan, called the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay law “a nuisance.” Another Romney surrogate said the law is little more than “a handout to trial lawyers.” Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) agrees–of course, he approved and signed legislation repealing Wisconsin’s equal pay law, so that shouldn’t come as a surprise.

There’s just one little problem with this effort to pretend that their problem isn’t with women getting treated equally. As it happens, trial lawyers–no matter how clever–cannot collect a fee unless and until they win the case.

Let me put this in language even non-lawyers will understand. Trial lawyers generally take cases on contingency. That means that unless they win the case, neither they nor the client will see a penny. Contingent fee arrangements, whatever their defects, give people access to the justice system who could not otherwise afford a lawyer. Contingent fee arrangements also provide a powerful incentive to lawyers to take only “meritorious” cases–no lawyer in his right mind wants to spend months or years on a case that’s a likely loser and won’t pay a dime. (Even when the lawyer thinks a case is very solid, there is always a substantial risk of losing. As I used to tell my clients, going to trial is always a crap shoot, no matter how strong a case you think you have.)

So–if we follow the argument being made by the Romney camp, they oppose the Lilly Ledbetter Act because lawyers who win cases–by proving that their clients were denied equal pay for equal work–will make money.

But they aren’t against equal pay for women. No siree. If you want to give all your employees who are doing the same work the same pay, why that’s fine. But if you don’t, you shouldn’t have to worry that the big bad trial lawyer will come after you.

They aren’t against equal pay for us girls. They’re just against providing a remedy to those of us who get shafted.

Just like they aren’t for rape. They’re just against allowing a woman who gets pregnant as a result do anything about it.

They may not be humane (or even human), but you have to give them credit: in this, at least, they’re consistent!

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If It Walks Like a Duck, Quacks Like a Duck…

Supporters of Mike Pence’s gubernatorial campaign pooh-pooh the notion that their candidate is an extremist. The candidate himself is frantically trying to re-introduce himself with huge ad buys that avoid any reference to his (exceedingly lackluster) congressional performance or to policies he supports.

Did you know he took his wife skating on their first date? Or that his grandfather was a bus driver?

His surrogates are also crying foul about Democrats’ use of a booklet published by the Indiana Policy Review when Pence was President of that organization, called “Indiana Mandate: an Agenda for the 1990s.” I would agree that a manifesto written nearly 25 years ago shouldn’t be relevant today, had Pence ever suggested he had changed the positions it espoused, or had he not consistently voted for the philosophy that booklet expressed.

You can find out about that document here.

Wonder why he voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Act, an act to enforce equal pay for women?

Wonder why he has worked tirelessly to completely de-fund Planned Parenthood?

Wonder why he opposes the Americans with Disabilities Act? Minimum wage laws?

Wonder why he supports school vouchers and other, extensive privatization initiatives?

The justifications are all in that first booklet. Pence’s voting record during his time in Congress has been consistent with these and other positions set out in that Policy Review document. That in itself is fine–here’s a candidate who has a very strong ideology and who has continued to support that ideology. The idea of elections is that we voters get to compare the positions held by the candidates and choose between them. Unfortunately, when candidates realize that their beliefs are unlikely to be embraced by the average voter, they do what Pence is doing: they re-invent themselves.

Mike Pence has never shown the slightest interest in economic development, transportation policy, public administration, or the myriad other issues that occupy a governor. His sole passion has been the social issues that divide Americans–and even in the Hoosier heartland, most people do not agree with his positions on those issues. So he’s trying to “re-invent” himself as a softer, gentler Mike Pence.

When someone walks like a duck, quacks like a duck…..he’s a duck. When someone has an uninterrupted history of ideological extremism, he’s an extremist.

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