Day 71: Wit or Whimsy, the age-old incendiary question: Is There a Superior Race?
I make no bones about supporting women’s rights. Having lived many long years, having endured demeaning looks and comments, having been assumed to be uneducated and/or lacking ability and mental acuity, and having been overlooked for raises and promotions because being heavy and plain is not as acceptable or desirable as being cute and thin, I’ve pretty much experienced the brunt of others’ unreasonable expectations, especially those of men…not ALL men, but a vast majority.
My mother never said much. She was the quiet type. An incredible cook, an excellent baker, artistically gifted, smart, had a beautiful voice, and she was a great mother - a better one than I ever hoped to be or managed to be. Every now and then, a real gem would come from nowhere, an unexpected comet falling through the roof of the house. On one particularly frustrating day, she said, “There is a superior race. It’s women!” No afterthoughts were forthcoming. The statement sat there like a lonely diamond ring just waiting for someone to pick it up and run with it.
I never forgot that one, and I have let it be a shining beacon as I’ve navigated the unmarked paths of my life. It has carried me beyond all those unreasonable expectations, and there have been many along the way.
I would like to direct some remembrances particularly to the younger women reading this post, because you need to know why we “older” women are so adamant about preserving “all” women’s rights. You don’t have to agree with all of them (there are certainly women in my generation that don’t), but you still have to fight for them, because the loss of ANY civil right is the beginning of the loss of ALL civil rights. They are like dominos…knock one over and the whole line falls victim to what started as a small shove.
There was a time, not so long ago, when a woman couldn’t vote. She was a second-class citizen. My grandmothers (both born in the mid-late 1800s) fought for that right, and the right to serve in the government. Ohio’s first congresswoman, Frances Bolton, was a friend of one of my grandmothers.
In my mom’s generation, many women worked while the men were away fighting for freedom from Nazi oppression in WWII. After the war, women had to fight for the right to work. Women were forced to give up their jobs as the men returned from the war. They were expected to stay home, have babies, and make sure dinner was on the table for their husband. He made all the decisions. ALL of them.
If a couple was divorced, the woman was blamed for the failure of the marriage and treated as an outcast by other women in the area. She was considered tainted goods, looked down upon, and treated like a prostitute. She had difficulty finding housing, could not get a mortgage, sometimes couldn’t even rent a place without her own father signing for her. Forget getting any kind of credit. Every loan had to have a man co-sign before it was approved.
Even as late as the 1970s and 1980s, it was impossible for a woman to get a credit card without a co-signer. I remember my boss telling me that she and her husband had moved to Switzerland. She was setting up a house for them while he was working. When she went to buy a sofa and side chair for the living room with cash, they refused to sell it to her until her husband came in and “approved” the purchase.
In the early 2000s, my husband and I were both working. I drove a much longer round trip to and from work and desperately needed a better vehicle. Jim was home watching the kids while I was out looking for a new car. I went to the Nissan dealer and asked to test drive a Nissan Quest. The salesman was outwardly hostile at having to deal with a woman. He refused to let me take the vehicle off the car lot and insisted on riding along (on my rounds of the parking lot). I decided I liked that minivan better than the others I tried, so I asked for a written quote. He refused. Not because they didn’t give them out, but because I was there alone. He would be happy to give me one when I brought my husband in to approve the buy, and that way they could be certain that there was someone who could pay for the vehicle!
I informed him in no uncertain terms that I wouldn’t buy it from him if he had the last vehicle on the planet, that I had a job, that I made more money than my husband, that the vehicle would be mine, and that I would buy what I wanted with no input from my husband, but now I would be taking my money down the street to purchase the car from someone else. I also informed him that I was a writer and would be sending comments to the local newspaper about the dealership’s propensity for sex discrimination and inform all my friends and co-workers not to buy from his dealership. I turned on my heel and marched out. I also followed up on my threats.
This is but one small example of the hell we went through to be able to live our lives on our own terms. I could fill this page with examples, but I’m sure they would make better reading in another setting. The point is, I don’t want to go back there, but there are a load of old white men trying to force us to do just that. I don’t want that for my daughter, for my granddaughters, or for my great granddaughters. I want them to be able to live their lives as full citizens of this country with equal freedoms and equal responsibilities. Someone recently floated that there should only be one vote per household and that the man gets to choose. So, you see, losing your rights is closer than you realize.
But Mom’s gem is not just for women. It affects everyone in this country who is being treated unequally. I don’t care if you are male or female, what color your skin is, what church you belong to if any, or what you do as consenting adults in the privacy of your bedroom. None of us was meant to be enslaved or shunned by someone who thinks they are superior. We need to get to the point that every person treats every other person with dignity and respect. It’s not that hard to do or at least to try.
One last aside. I would not mention this had I not listened to this interview with my own ears. Back in early 2016, I was vetting political candidates. I do it regularly before I vote. Forewarned is forearmed, or so they say. I vote for the person I consider best suited for the position, regardless of party. I was listening to (God help me) the Howard Stern Show. His guest was Donald Trump. There were two things I took away from that interview:
1) When asked why he made Melania sign a pre-nuptial agreement, Trump replied “Well you know, Howard, vagina is expensive.” He said that verbatim. This indicated to me that he considered his current and previous wives as nothing more than expensive whores. And he said it on an internationally broadcast show. Absolutely despicable. This was prior to the recording on the bus about grabbing women’s crotches.
2) Trump made a long statement about having superior DNA and how great it was to have been born with such great superior DNA to everyone else. Then he compared himself to a great race horse. “Some horses have great DNA and some don’t, but then there is Secretariat, the triple crown winner. It’s great to have such superior DNA…just like Secretariat.”
At that point, I decided that he would never have my vote. Mom’s gem of a statement came flooding back into my consciousness again. I had other choice thoughts as well, but I will not expound on them. All I can do is tell you what I heard. The choice of how you want to live your life is yours. It would behoove you to choose wisely. Some choices, once made and then regretted, are not easy to reverse.