American Woman, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise

April 14, 2012 Martha Thomases 0 Comments

As we discussed here and here, we, as a nation, are having a lot of the same arguments we had more than 50 years ago.  Abortion, birth control, voting rights, lynchings — all these things were thought we settled policy are once again on the front page.

Next up is equal pay for equal work.  When I was a young feminist, back in the 1960s, all sorts of people would say, “You dykes lose me with the bra-burning thing, but I support equal pay.”

Except now, some Republicans apparently can’t even go that far.

Since January 2009, we’ve heard them say they want to “Take America Back.”  Now we know they mean back in time.  If you don’t believe me, read this, where a Republican states that women don’t care about money because raising children is more important.  I wonder how he raises children without any money?

But isn’t Mad Men really cool?  Don’t all us women want a Don Draper?  He’s so handsome, and he makes a lot of money.

And also he might dump us with no warning, or bring home an STD, and he’s so distant that one can have a more emotionally intimate relationship with a microwave.  Which I think is the next bit of modernity that the GOP will attack.

As a white woman, I can’t really comment on how this nostalgia for a time when there were separate – but equal! – bathrooms, water fountains, schools, etc. for “coloreds,” to use the polite term of the time, feels to African-Americans today.  But I can talk about the so-called “war on women.”

Of course, the Republicans don’t want to call it a war on women.  They want to blame Obama for even starting the conversation.  Or they want to blame the media, a tactic they developed in the 1960s for which they are so nostalgic.  However, the facts are against them.  (Although, as Stephen Colbert says, the facts have a liberal bias.)

Even their solutions reek of days gone by.  The extreme right thinks the solution to economic inequality is more restrictions on the rights of women. Somehow, if we’re left without resources, men will magically want to take care of us and all of our needs.  Yeah, that worked so well the first time.

My personal life lately is very difficult.  However, I’m in a position of privilege, and while that privilege makes things easier, it doesn’t make them easy.  I can only imagine how horrible it would be without my extra resources.

What I can’t imagine is why anyone would want to put others through this.  And it is inconceivable to me that anyone would vote for it.

Martha Thomases, Media Goddess, misses only one thing from the 1950s – self-contained comic book stories.