No joke: "women's issues" are not the "key" to the election

“No joke: Women’s issues key to election” declares a headline in the Seattle Times last week: Mitt Romney is gaining ground with women voters. Of course, it would be more accurate to say white women voters, such as the 58 percent who voted for neo-Nazi David Duke in the Louisiana governor’s election over twenty years ago; I remember reading in a magazine article about Duke driving through a black neighborhood on a “campaign” stop, getting his kicks out of all the residents (he referred to them by the N-word) jeering him. For him, it was “validation.” After the election, Romanian-born Andrei Codrescu, a professor at LSU, commented on NPR how it disturbed him that he could walk outside and know that 60 percent of the white people he encountered actually voted for such a despicable man. That election was also indicative of the fact that white female voters were not necessarily motivated by issues that encompassed “gender.”

And so it is with the 2012 presidential election. As far as what is commonly understood to be “women’s issues”—abortion, female victimhood, gay rights, equal this and that—women voters are obviously better off voting for Barack Obama and his Justice Department. But as we have seen, this kind of mentality, as far as white women are concerned, doesn’t necessarily indicate “liberal” tendencies; it can disguise feelings of “entitlement,” self-obsession and bigotry. One may recall Hillary Clinton fanatic Harriet Christian at the DNC meeting in 2008, ranting about the “inadequate black male.” Afterwards, she went on Fox News and expanded on her racist predilections, and announced she was going to vote for Republican John McCain. Since then, whether purposefully or not, Hillary has been a liability as Secretary of State, the fawning media notwithstanding.

I believe a lot of white people, particularly women, voted for Obama in 2008 because it was the latest fad, the “cool” thing to do—a “new frontier,” like voting for John F. Kennedy all over again. But in this election, the slick-looking snake-oil salesman, Romney, has taken pains to remind them who they are, and are not—the infamous “47 percent,” the people who supposedly believe themselves “victims” of society and who Romney clearly intends to mean the opposite of Hillary’s “hard-working Americans, white Americans.” When it really comes down to it, this “women’s issues” thing is the shibboleth of activists. It only affects the voting pattern of a minority of women, and if they can’t see through Romney’s say anything-to-get-elected façade, and his privileged, “good” Mormon wife whose only “job” was to oversee the raising of her stable of horses (of course, she didn’t dirty her own hands with the manure and such), then there must be those “other” issues that really motivates them, like latent prejudice, self-interest, and lingering bitterness over the “treatment” of Hillary. 

I’m not going to say that we don’t live in “complicated” world; if you have power, at some point you are going to abuse it—even if you consider yourself a “victim.” We see this in the court system (particularly divorce and child custody courts), and I experienced it when a black Metro bus driver drove past me at a designated stop, dropped off a white man at the corner, and quickly slammed the door shut and started to drive off—but not before I had  caught-up to the bus and my arm was caught in the door; he got real scared when I told him I was going to report his actions to Metro. On the other hand, some people try to make things too simple-minded. Take BBC World Service news radio, which I listen to on my way to work in the wee hours of the morning. Every other day there is some story about victimization of women in some part of the world, such as India; the BBC provides anecdotal evidence of this, but it seems paltry when you consider the fact that many women in India—due to the caste system that still prevails "unofficially"—live much better and are better educated than 900 million people in the country, both men and women, who live in de facto poverty. This is not conducive to the practice of “equality” when in fact there is none to give, except between castes. The BBC habitually ignores the realities of poverty and social inequality amongst classes and race; even a recent story on high unemployment and poverty in African and Pakistani neighborhoods in London was bereft of any mention of the effect of racism and discrimination in British society.

The fact of the matter is that outside the hardcore liberals, the decision of white female voters will be dependent on self-interest, or what they perceive as their self-interest. For right-wing women, race is the single most important factor, regardless if they admit it or not.  For the truly “independent” voter, it is which way the wind blows them; if Romney convinces them that Obama is not “qualified” because he is black, and in doing so causes them to forget that Romney’s proposed policies are what got this country in the mess it found itself in 2008—in fact his tax proposal only makes the current fiscal and infrastructure problems far worse—then I fear for this country’s future. Unfortunately for Obama, this election doesn’t have that “feel good” momentum of 2008. The economy will continue to improve, and if elected Romney will attempt to take credit for it, but if his regressive tax plans—that benefits only his “class”—actually passes, the long-term damage to the country will be almost insurmountable, particularly when takes into consideration the crumbling infrastructure and education, latter of which we heard Romney say in the last debate he is only too happy to fill in the gap with educated workers from China and India and leave native-born Americans in the lurch. And we shouldn't forget Romney's stated desire to end so-called "Obamacare" day one; what he really proposes is to end the last best chance at health care reform before it becomes unreformable.

Another reason why “women’s issues” as the Seattle Times “understands” it will not be a “key” to the election is that most white female voters would say that a “women’s issue” that the media likes to stir debate on—abortion—is “settled,” despite what the advocates say; if white women voters actually believed this not to be case, they would take greater pains to see to it that another extreme-right justice like Scalia and Thomas is not selected to the U.S. Supreme Court, by not voting for a Republican. The reality is that white women are quite happy to see a Supreme Court that overturns affirmative action and in general do things they perceive as “affirming” white supremacy. They may in fact be concerned about equal pay, but not in the way newspapers think. In their mind, they—like white males—see the principle “enemy” as racial minorities, and the way they allegedly “harm” or “threaten” their potential for high incomes and lifestyles. 

Thus it is once again white women who are the “face” of the latest U.S. Supreme Court case revisiting the issue of “affirmative action”—which white women have, of course, benefited from far more than racial minorities in the past but now do not require it, since they represent a plurality of college students, meaning that they are now “under threat.” The alleged “affirmative action” under attack now is the University of Texas’ program of admitting the top eight percent of a high school’s graduating class. The plaintiffs’ complaint is that they didn’t finish in the top eight percent of their class, but if they scored higher than someone (presumably a minority) did at their school, then they should have “preference” in admittance over that person. Although the Texas program is not technically an “affirmative action” program, and it is the quality of the instruction of individual schools—rather than that of the student—that is the principle variable,  it isn’t just far-right activists and racists who continue to do what they can to deny opportunity for under-represented minorities; the supreme irony is that while many whites claim that blacks and Latinos do not “contribute” to society, they seem to wish to do their level best to insure that they never do. 

Another irony is that it seems that “preference” is something that “women’s issues” white women demand for themselves but not for others. It is a variation of how the Seattle Times’ editorialized that “we can’t help boys in school if it means ‘hurting’ girls.” I read a letter to the editor in the New York Times by a psychology professor who said his studies showed that the 90 percent female teachers in elementary and high schools give many male students the impression that they don’t care if they succeed in school or not. It is like that South Shore School in Seattle I read about in USA Today recently, where a female software engineer helps girls learn computing—while the mostly minority male students, the most vulnerable group—are left ignored and further behind. It is also a form of selective discrimination. The result of this, according to another USA Today story I read, is that 57 percent of all college and university students are women. This is supposed to be “good?” How do you address it without “hurting” the number of women? And if white women form the greater portion of the higher education demographic, it would seem that they are more the likely candidate to be practicing discrimination, as we have seen in those several anti-affirmative action cases before the Supreme Court in which white females claimed to be “oppressed.” It simply doesn’t pass the smell test.

Last July I wrote a post concerning Title IX. Most people recognize it as a law that mandates that female students receive an equal opportunity to engage in college athletics as male students. The fact is that athletics is only a sideline of the act; it was aimed to “rectify” what was at the time perceived to be inequality of opportunity for females in the overall college experience. But that is clearly not the case now.  Another “unintended” consequence of Title IX is the probability that admissions departments have gone too far in showing favoritism toward female applicants. How can this be true? Consider this factoid: The 2011 SAT report states the males scored higher on the SAT than females in both the traditional categories—verbal and math—for a total score of 1031, compared to 995 for females. Of course, now they call the “verbal” test “critical reading,” and the SAT board has added a new test—“writing,”—which females naturally score higher, probably because this is the test where the bullshit quotient is highest. Still, even with that test, males scored higher overall, and yet it appears that this latter test, when used as an admissions criteria, has more “weight” than the other tests. 

I admit that my opinion on these matters are colored by experience. I recently took to partaking in the triglyceride-rich comestibles at a certain fast food restaurant in Kent, which had the advantage of having a readily available power outlet for my word processor, and no one makes a fuss when I plug in. On one recent occassion I put my work material down at a table adjacent to the outlet on one side of the building, and went up to the counter to order. Ahead of me were two white women, one with long dark hair and glasses, and the other with short blond hair. The way they were talking, I thought that they were somewhat on the arrogant side. The dark-haired female received her order while the other waited, and about the same time I received mine. I went to the table I had left my things; the dark-haired female had gone to a center table before she observed where I was sitting, and with exaggerated gestures and momentary “confusion” said suddenly “Oh, where to sit?” She didn't fool me one bit with her act. I said “Oh, don’t sit near me,” and she revealed herself by the patronizing enmity of her response: “Oh, is there a problem with you?” which was of course entirely disingenuous on her part. “No” I said, “I thought you are the one with the problem.” In a huff went she went to the other side of the room; when her blond friend sat down with her, they exchanged words, and blond gave me an evil, hate-filled look. A few minutes later the dark-haired woman’s cell phone ringtone went off. She looked at me with trepidation, because it revealed more than she wished. I started chuckling and said “Ahh—country music.” There was oldies music being piped in, and when shortly thereafter the Monkeys’ “I’m Not Your Stepping Stone” started playing, I couldn’t suppress another chuckle. 

What was I to deduce from this episode? What was the “women’s issue” that I was supposed to be “sensitive” to? How about the other day when I went into my storage facility for a few minutes? Why was that cigarette-puffing, trailer trash white woman slowly driving round and round the building, keeping her eye me to see where I went, and when I asked her as she stared at me through her side view mirror what she was doing, in that cracker-accented voice said she just wanted to access her unit, implying that she was afraid to do if I was anywhere on the premises. This is a “women’s issue” too? No, this is a Romney voter.