Is Obama perfect? No. Should he have spoken out more directly about the blatant misogyny Clinton faces in her campaign. Yes. Are we, as women, going to have to be vigilant no matter who the candidate is, when it comes to our rights? Yes.
But holy Jesus, leaving the Democratic party because you didn’t get your way?
What? Now that you’re pushing retirement and not having any more kids, you can just turn your back on feminism? Is that it? It doesn’t matter to you if Roe v. Wade is overturned because you’re not going to need an abortion so fuck the rest of us? It doesn’t matter if women ever achieve equal pay for equal work because you’re leaving the job market so fuck the rest of us? You’d throw your lot in with the Republicans?
Have you forgotten eight-plus years of abstinence-only education and purity balls and lies, lies, lies about women’s health? Have you forgotten the women (and men) sitting on roofs in flooded New Orleans, drowning in New Orleans, dying in New Orleans, while Bush and McCain played “Let’s Have a Birthday Party?”
I read this over at Mack’s and I about fell over.
I literally could not believe it. I mean, I trust Mack, but I thought, no, no, progressives have got to understand that, even when things don’t work out they way they’d liked, we have to stick by our beliefs, right? No feminist would suggest burning the whole damn house down, where we all have to live, just because we didn’t get our choice of head contractor.
Here’s what makes me most angry about this. Egalia has readers. When she posts something about women’s issues in Tennessee, it gets read by bloggers all over the country. She’s able to get the word out in a way that no other feminist blogger in the state can do, both because she has more readers than the rest of us, and because she cultivates relationships with larger blogs in ways that the rest of us don’t, for whatever reasons.
But the fact is that, when Egalia posted something about the plight of women in this state, it got wide-spread attention. And for the past little while, she hasn’t been posting on any other women’s issue, other than the election of Clinton. And on the one hand, fine. That’s her business.
But on the other hand, we’ve needed her. Campfield didn’t suddenly become less a problem. Hobbs hasn’t turned Tennessee into some place full of sweetness and light. Babies are still dying in Memphis like it’s a third-world country.
We needed her to give voice to those issues, because she gets heard, but she was singularly focused on the Clinton campaign.
Okay, fine.
I thought, “Well, okay, for her this is a big deal, a lifetime opportunity, the culmination of a lot of work that she and second-wavers like her want to see through.”
And I hoped she would come back to the work we women in Tennessee have benefited from her doing.
But we don’t need Roe v. Wade overturned, because the second that happens, abortions will be illegal in Tennessee. We don’t need economic policies that put more strain on working class families. We don’t need a president unashamed to call his wife a cunt in public.
The last thing women from 0-100 need is a McCain presidency.
And how can we not see this rhetoric–if you don’t do what I want, I will work to punish you as terribly as I can–for the bullying bullshit it is?
If you would sell us out because you didn’t get your way…
Well, you “angry white women,” on behalf of the rest of us, who aren’t actively looking to knowingly make things much, much worse, don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out.
Edited to Add: Also, Clinton’s not leaving the party. She’s made no noises about leaving the party. She wants to defeat McCain. So, why is it that folks trust her leadership enough to want her to be president but don’t trust her leadership enough to, oh, follow her lead about sticking with the Party?
Tiny Cat Pants 