Texans Don’t Have a Woman Problem
February 5, 2010
by Halane Hughes
A pro-Perry blogger read my Kay Bailey Hutchison piece and is under the impression that acknowledging Kay’s pro-woman record will actually hurt her chances of winning. To use his words, my post:
…reads like an attack hit sheet put out by Rick’s peeps.
He then excerpts my piece including all of Kay’s pro-woman accomplishments. If you believe the blogger, you would assume Rick Perry is pro-rape, thinks women should get paid less than men, has an inferiority complex when it comes to women trailblazers and has some kind of issue with Ladies Home Journal. Ouch! That doesn’t sound like the kind of “peep” I would want governing Texas or any state for that matter. Surely this blogger must be wrong.
In his closing line, he paints a scary picture of Texas, saying my post:
is almost as bad as having David Duke endorse you in Harlem…
Is the pro-Perry blogger saying Republicans in Texas are woman haters? Now there I know he’s wrong! Kay was elected to the Senate in 1993 and Texas voters, Republicans included, have been re-electing her ever since. They obviously don’t have a woman problem in Texas.
Brava Texas! Go Kay!
Halane,
I am from Texas, moved to NYC and lived there for over 20 years and also lived in the Pacific Northwest for a while. I moved back to Texas 4 years ago. With regard to how Texas views women, well, having lived outside of Texas for as long as I did, I have to tell you what I immediately recognized is that Texas is still a “cowboy” state. Yes, it has changed since I left in the late 70’s, but the men still run the state and a majority of the men still have “old fashioned” views of how women should look, act and dress. I wouldn’t call it “hate”, but the men here are not comfortable with an outspoken, strong woman! The good ol boy network is alive and well here and, because of that, they still have a much easier chance of getting elected than women do.
For example, Ann Richards was cnsidered one of the best governors Texas ever had, but she lost to the inexperienced, no record GW Bush (sound familiar?!) The reason, well, Ann Richards was a topic in the film Bush’s Brain (by Joseph Mealey and Michael Shoob), in a long segment regarding her defeat in the 1994 election for Texas Governor. The film presents the case that the defeat of Richards involved a whispering campaign that the governor (mother of four children) was a lesbian because she had allegedly hired many gays and lesbians to work on her re-election campaign.
Unfortunately, men still have the advantage of simply being men, not only in Texas, but in the majority of the country (there are some states that have given women a more level playing field in politics), but Texas is not one of them.
I’ll back up Kathleen’s perception of Texas. Having lived in Texas for more than 25 years before moving away in 1995, I have seen first hand exactly what Kathleen has described.
In Texas if you can do it you will get the job–man or woman. And Ann Richards, GOD BLESS HER, is the grand dame of Texas and the most beloved to boot. Of course, she kicked ass when needed and governed with grace and intelligence. The loss to Bush was a real blow to Texas and those who loved Ann, and probably proof of the good old boys network, but not proof that women can’t and don’t make it here in the Lone Star State.
I am a strong woman who works for a woman owned business and I have to prove up every single day of my life. As long as you can walk the talk, you have a fighting chance in Texas. Just make sure you can prove up. As a child I traveled Texas extensively and I can tell you that you won’t find stronger women anywhere and I am talking cross cultural, cross political, cross economic lines and they are leading families, running family businesses, farming, driving tractors AND holding political offices. We also have a history of strong women in Texas and I grew up reading about them, and others.
Kay Bailey Hutchison can hold her own anywhere, but I DETEST her spending record and her absolute lie to us about the banker buy out. I would LOVE to vote for her, but I can’t because I would be a hypocrite. She may still win because I am just one single voter, but if she loses it will not be because of sexism it will be her voting record and her inability to keep her promise.
Houston just elected Annise Parker to be the Mayor–an open lesbian, and Shelia Jackson Lee also hails from Houston. Texas is full of cowboys AND cowgirls, and many times it is the cowgirls bringing home the trophies…..
Well I see a lot of talk coming out of the New York, DC area about how they are so forward thinking on women and all but I see little talk and a lot of women in power in the West half of the USA. Remember the sexist media comes to you from New York. I think the state of women country wide would improve if east coast women would look at reality and fight the sexism that is right in their face. What I hear seems to be “Yeah this is bad here in NY but not nearly as bad as the rest of the country because we are progressive.” Well from the outside looking in the East Coast looks like the sexism source. Again I live in Washington, we have a female Governor, Two federal gov female Senators, our state supreme court is half female and the lead justice is female. Who is backwards?
I agree with Jenniferintexas, in the West if you can do the job then people have no problem with you doing it.
jenniferintexas and bes,
If you can do the job?! Ann Richards damn well did a fantastic job as governor, but ony got one term as governor in favor of the lightweight, GW Bush.
If things are so great in Texas for qualified women, then what went wrong with Richards? Are you telling me GW was the best the state had to offer for governor and that neither Richards nor any other woman were qualified to run against GW? Wow, no wonder men hold the majority of political office. They’ve got women, as well as men, believing they are more qualified than they really are. I’d love to live in that world.
Don’t talk in theory about what you believe to be true, show some statistics about how great it is for women in Texas. If none exist, don’t tell me it’s because there are justtoo few women qualified to run for office in Texas and it has nothing to do with the double standard that exists here, as much as it does just about everywhere else in the country.
Women make up 51% of the population and what you’re saying is that there was only 17% of that majority were qualified to run? No way.
If you say it’s because women don’t run, perhaps, it has a lot to do with the visceral attacks spewed at Hillary and Sarah in this last election cycle. It has NOTHING to do with not having enough qualified women, it has everything to do with misogyny and a country run predominantly by men, making more money than women and having the kind of money necessary to run for political office and they usually donate predominantly to male candidates.
Surely, that might have SOMETHING to do with the disparity that exists between men and women in political office.
We do not allow women equal opportunity anywhere in America, not even in the West. We say “if she’s the best person for the job” she can have it, but we’re full of nonsense. We make her do that job backwards and in heels. She has to be five times more qualified then any man just to step onto the playing field.
And as far as experience goes, forget that too. As soon as women get enough advanced degrees and a mile long resume, we change the rules. Now we want somebody fresh and new, somebody like Scott Brown who drives a pick up truck. Or somebody like Obama who’s foreign policy experience consisted of attending grade school in Indonesia. We gave him a Nobel Peace Prize for that accomplishment.
yttik,
Wonderfully said! If the “best person got the job”, I am certain that the tables would be turned and only 17% of men would be in Congress, with the rest being women!
In most cases, the women are the best person for the job because they are held to a much higher standard, unlike men, who are allowed to just show up and speak in platitudes while reading from a teleprompter and everyone calls them “brilliant”!
Kathleen,
You should read my post again because I think you skipped over some of it….
As far as stats from Texas I can tell you that I have traveled the country and went to school in two other states and I see more women in powerful positions in Texas than anywhere else. And as far as why women don’t run for public office there are a myriad of reasons ranging from societal to personal.
And yttk I totally agree with you regarding separate and, while you say five times more qualified, I would say the average woman running for office has to work 10 times harder to get elected because of sexism. HOWEVER, that does not mean that I have to vote for a woman if I think she is the lesser candidate. The first has nothing to do with the second, and voting for any woman does not empower women. Women, voting as a bloc, for the BEST CANDIDATE, however will empower women. And every single time that is a woman I will be thrilled. But I would cut off my right hand before I voted for the likes of Donna Brazille or Nancy Pelosi…
I have said this before and I will keep saying it. If women want women to succeed we must push the RIGHT women up the ladder, not just any woman. And once again I use Mr. Obama as a living example of pushing the WRONG man up the ladder–African Americans will NOT be helped by the legacy he will leave.
You want to blame sexism on why Coakley lost and I will blame stupidity. Despite polls and common sense, Coakley thought that clinging to Obama and stating she would vote for the Senate version of the Health care sham bill was going to get her elected….she dug her own grave on that one. Had I been in charge of her campaign she would have been talking to the independents LOUDLY and distancing herself from the Democrats…..and she would have won (or at least it wouldn’t have been the blood bath it was).
I declared my independence from the Democrats last year when they stole votes, bought out delegates, lied and cheated and breached my rights as an American citizen. I am proudly Independent and while I will ALWAYS support the woman/women I will ALWAYS vote for the best candidate.
JenniferinTexas, You keep saying you would LOVE to vote for Kay. I say go for it! You also keep bringing up spending. So I’ll address that: TX’s budget has been doubled since Perry took governorship. The state has HUGE deficit somewhere b/t 5 Billion and 12 Billion, depending on who is giving you the numbers. That’s Billion, with a “B” not an “m”. Talk about a spending record! Perry is not a fiscal conservative. He’s a FCINO, to use Fiorina’s term (fiscal conservative in name only). You cannot choose Perry over Kay based on spending records. Kay been serving TX in public office for a long time. She’s been around since the days when politicians were actually expected to do something. Now most politicians just talk up sensationalized issues which require no action on their part and Perry is the TX King of this style of politics. Please don’t let them sway you. Kay has done a wonderful job for TX which is the reason she’s been re-elected time and time again since 1993. Kay also has a better chance of getting elected in the general. She’s polling much stronger with the moderates and swings. Your words reflect the spirit of a true pro-woman voter. As I’m sure you know, women are grossly underrepresented in government at all levels and our country is suffering b/c of it. You have a chance to vote for a strong woman. And maybe as governor, she’ll appoint a woman to replace her in the senate. Your vote could be a 2 for 1. So I’m listening to you and I’m hearing “I would love to vote for a woman. I would LOVE to vote for Kay.” I say “Just do it!” You will not feel like a hypocrite, you will feel strong and right. Try it and see.
“If women want women to succeed we must push the RIGHT women up the ladder, not just any woman.”
Jennifer… a major problem with your statement is that it has been applied so often and so ubiquitously that no woman becomes qualified unless she is Superwoman or something. It is nit-picky to the point of insanity and complete exclusion. The vast majority of women in Congress and in other high-ranking positions are just as qualified and just as experienced as the men.
Karen,
Based on the horrible state of our country right now, I’d say the men are not as qualified as the women. Perhaps, we should give women a chance. We’ve been giving men a chance since the beginning of time and no matter how often and how horribly they screw up, we still find ourselves believing them when they tell us they can bring change things for the better.
I’m sick of hearing “if only the right woman comes along” too. When Hillary decided to run for president, she showed her substance and knowledge of complex issues and kicked their collective butts in the debates and was immenently more qualified than obama, yet, all everyone could focus on was that she was too polarizing. Funny thing happened this past year — it is obama who has single-handedly polarized the entire country and no one is screaming to the rooftops that he’s too polarizing. No, the media makes excuses and covers for him.
Then Sarah is selected as VP, and was immediately viewed as too pretty to be smart (yet, Dan Quayle, a pretty boy, was not attacked in the same way as Sarah was and still is). Sarah’s accomplishments were totally ignored and dismissed as insigificant! Here’s a woman who moved up in politics the old fashioned way — she worked hard and served the people and they kept electing her — from city council member, to mayor and then, governor. She did this on her own, without the help of a political machine (like obama did) and she’s viewed as less qualified than obama, and they excuse obama’s lack of experience by telling us what superior judgment he has and that was enough for him to be the most powerful person in the world.
The amount of cognitive dissonance that goes on when it comes to recognizing women for extraordinary achievements, as opposed to men who are celebrated to the ‘nth degree for far less. In fact, you’d never know women ever did anything of any significance in our country when you read our history books. Paul Revere gets recognized for riding his horse through town screaming the “british are coming”, but Susan B. Anthony and Cady Stanton are but footnotes for their extraodinary work in women getting the right to vote and work. By virtue of bringing women into the workplace changed the economic structure of the U.S. forever. That’s a significant achievement, but you’d never know it, based on the what’s considered important enough to put in history books and taught to our children. I’m really amused when men complain that there is not enough about conservative men in the history books and I think to myself — there’s almost nothing written about conservative, liberal, libertarian, or independent women in the history books, so, what are they complaining about!
It’s long past time to give women a chance. I am confident that we would treat men with a heck of lot more respect and consideration than they have shown us, and our country would be a lot better off than it is now.
Pure-blood Texan here…voting for KAY! More women in office=more power for women EVERYWHERE!
Kathleen, can I have your email addy, please? I would like to take our discussion of Perry off-blog.
immensely enjoyed the comments on pro women voting. thanks to Halane, Kathleen, Karen and Yttik. you said it all so well.
How do you all account for Washington having two female Senators a female governor half of our supreme court and the lead justice female if sexism reigns everywhere and there is no where that women get their chance? That looks like a killer case of cognitive dissonance to me. I don’t understand why you don’t look at the states that are sucesses and try to learn what the difference is. It looks like you just can’t take it that the East Coast isn’t a leader in opportunities for women. You have to look at the problem to solve it.
Coakley lost because she ran as an Obama stooge and pledged to vote for things The People did not want. If Brown ran as an Obama stooge he would have lost
Bes,
Women are becoming more and more disastisfed with their lack of representation in all branches of government and in business. The men who run everything know that they have to “throw us a bone” from time to time in order to keep us from actually figuring out that if we UNITE and support women the same way they do for men, the majority of the population – WOMEN – would surpass them in power! To keep us complacent and not rocking the boat by realizing the power we already have due to our being the majority, they have to give the illusion of change that women are movin on up. If they truly respected us and wanted us to obtain equitable power with them, they would not have set up road block after road block coupled with impossible standards that no woman OR man could meet. Why do you think they do that? Out of respect?
What you are not seeing is that whatever positions women do have in the three branches, the numbers are kept small enough so that women have very little power to affect any real change that the men do not sanction themselves. Women have to depend on the men to join with them to affect any change. If there were an equal number of women, they would have real leverage.
Women are the majority but we are sorely under represented. I call it “taxation without representation”. Women will never have any real power to affect change in the way we are governed until we have equity with men in power. They know it. They just hope women continue to think like you do.
Beside Washington state there is gross under representation having all the effects Kathleen described. Bes always reminds us of the pioneer women of the West. I have no clear idea how we can use this to our advantage, because states don’t follow what other states do. But i think we need to be creative and investigate how the better situation in Washington can be of our advantage. many of you may remember that Janette Rankin from one of the Western states who had women voting was elected and helped the suffrage movement from her position in Washington DC. Also Alice Paul the brilliant suffragette, came up with the strategy to campaign in the West in the states where women could vote, that the womens vote would be anti democrat to show that if the democratic party further opposed suffrage, they would lose their senators from the Western states. this campaign brought us our martyr Mulholland who died during one of the campaign speeches from exhaustion (having pernicious anemia, which is easily cured today). This campaign had several democrats lose and gave the shoe in ones a run for their life. these senators credited Alice Paul campaign for that outcome and some of the democrats involved in the Western campaign came to strongly support suffrage. you can all read this in every detail in Alice Paul’s biography.
Bes I am in support that you remind us of the situation in Washington state. Lets go further and think how this can contribute to a strategy for he rest of the country.
Thanks, I am a science person and writing is not my strong suit. I do think taking a long hard look at how women are gaining power in some areas would be helpful to the movement as a whole. New York seems a center of the universe for sexism. You can’t believe how stunned people were when we got the Howard Stern show out here, we couldn’t believe how Neandertal it seemed. But sadly what originates in Ny is beamed all over the world and gives voice and some credibility to the sexist opinions of bigots like Stern. Did you know that Stern is plotting his return to regular radio where he can spew his misogyny using The Peoples airwaves? Spewing that sort of non stop degrading speech towards Jews, Blacks or Gay men would never be tolerated on Public airwaves but Stern probably will be. I hate to say it but I think there needs to be semi violent protest against some things that are sexist. At the very least property damage to make malecentric corporate america pay attention. And for sure strong organized boycotts of any sponsors. And Conservative religious women’s orgs could be strong partners in a boycott if feminists would learn to hold their noses and cooperate with groups who are not idealogically pure. At any rate if we don’t have a plan of action with Stern we have no one but ourselves to blame.
It sounds like the blogger who wants to re-elect Guvnor Good Hair (h/t to another great Texas woman, Molly Ivins) fears what would happen if women from various factions united behind KBH’s candidacy becauseshe’s a woman rather than in spite of the fact that she’s a woman. It just might catch on, and then where would we be? Possibly post-patriarchy, that’s where, and that’s a place the establishment, being male, fears most of all. Apparently, KBH standing up for women is equivalent in his mind to white supremacists standing up for the poor down-trodden white men, burdened as they are with all that unearned privilege, one of which is running everything, according to rules they invented, into the ground.
I’ve watched with great interest, New Agenda’s efforts to get the 30% solution off the ground. It’s about the only thing that hasn’t been tried to get our very unbalanced world back into some semblance of balance, and therefore, good working order. Unfortunately, the maiden voyage was Coakley’s run in MA and we all know how that turned out, a very inauspicious beginning to say the least. There are some lessons to be learned there, one of which is that women who run as dems in the age of Obama have a serious handicap to overcome. The Send a Message crowd won out, but the real message has become muddled, as it always is, by the powers that be. The real message is that Obama and his policies are highly unpopular, left right and center, and anyone who is seen as going along with him will more than likely go down in flames. If that person is a dem woman, there are the extra obstacles afforded by sexism and being starved of the all-important campaign $ by the party if you try to run against the Obama millstone. This pains me as a long-time former dem-voting woman who wants to see progressive women voted into office. If I was in MA, I would’ve voted for Coakley in a flat second. I’m in NM and will hopefully be able to cast a vote for our first female governor, Diane Denish. I grew up in MO and will support, however I can, the candidacy of Robin Carnahan for Roy Blunt’s Senate seat. If I was in Texas, there’d be no doubt in my mind about voting for KBH, it’d be a done deal. In 2012, if Palin makes it past the GOP version of the good ol’ boys gauntlet, and the dems don’t have the sense to change horses, I’ll probably be casting my first vote for a woman for POTUS, unless there’s some insurgent third party running a better woman for president.
To a person mired down in the old partisan way of thinking, either of which is poisoned by the patriarchy, my votes and support probably seem to be all over the place, but they are decidedly not. They are all of piece, all anti-establishment, all pro-women, all solution-oriented instead of repeating the old insanity of voting for men, hoping against all well-established evidence that they can overcome their conditioning and represent all people, not just men. In 5000 years, men haven’t seen fit to recognize women as fellow people and represent their interests when they’ve had the chance, and I predict this year will be no different, no matter how many men women decide are the ‘better candidate’.
I’ve heard that 30% of the Senate seats are up for grabs this year, and plenty of women are running for them. If we could elect women running for all those seats and add them to the incumbent women in the Senate, we could see whether 30% is the tipping point by the end of this year, with our own eyes. People don’t want change they can believe in, they want change they can actually see. Seeing is believing, no? So let’s just see whether this 30% thing is real change or not. The catch is, though, that women have to stop being divided, conquered, and suckered into voting for men when there are perfectly good women running. We should know by now where the highway goes on that one, a place where the blogger boy for Guvnor Good Hair no doubt feels very comfortable.
Another thing, a large part of keeping women down is shutting them up which corporate media has been very good at. With the internet we can get around that. I think giving women a place to post a chapter from books they write so we could buy (download) the rest of the book if interested would give women writers a way to sell their ideas and facilitate female communication, and fire up feminisim. I know I would love to read some fiction about a group of ordinary women who form a secret group to disrupt and fire bomb Corporate America and K street. Sort of feminist Robin Hoods. I also know a book like that would never make it through an old fashioned corporate male approval process, but now it doesn’t have to. Fireing up the female imagination, especially that of our young girls is important and could revive feminisim. Sorry for my spelling, I somehow turned off my spell check and can’t figure out how to turn it back on.
Once again, and Bes YES MA’AM I agree with you, I do not think that Kay is “perfectly good.” I think she and Mr. Good Hair are both crappy but she is MORE crappy.
And Kay is going to lose because of the lie people. She voted with Mr. Obama and she lied to Texas, and in this economy with the nonsense and evil going on in Washington, I am sorry but voters are not going to forget those two things. Unfortunately, I think she sealed her own fate.
Take any woman in Texas, show me she has common sense and is honest, and I would cast my vote for HER for gov in a heartbeat. I am a firm believer that most women do it better, but most does not mean all. There are plenty of women that are as bad or worse than most men and I am not voting for them just because they are women.
Call me the enemy, but I don’t think I am. I just want good people to be in charge.
Karen,
May I ask why we should take our discussion about Perry off blog? I’ve always thought that public debate is healthy and opens the door to new ideas and perceptions to be out there for consideration and thought.
because I wanted to talk to you privately. We can still discuss Perry here.
May I remind Bes that the State Legislature in Washington state is 68% male. And the reason our US Senators are female is because they were the Democrat nominees in a Democrat leaning state due to the population of Seattle. If they were Dem males they would have won. Our female Democrat governor barely won both elections, when I say barely, I mean within a few hundred votes. I wish I could agree with you, Bes, but every time you claim that the West is not sexist, I cringe. How do you explain the bikini barista stands on every street corner? Have we ridded our state of strip clubs yet? Sexism is still alive and well here in the PNW. I see it every single day.
Karen,
Why don’t you give me your e-mail address and I’ll contact you?
Hi Patty, I agree with you on setting a high bar before claiming sexism and patriarchy is over. to me that we can have bank accounts, own land and have inheritance patterns female to female is not a sign that patriarchy is over. if there were no strip club, no rape or other form of sexual violence, I would start believing that women are respected. still having all states in the partriarchy category there are differences of levels of sexism. a state with two female senators and a female governor shows me that the population is operating on a higher level of respect for women.in these subtle differences may be beneficial for a strategy to overcome all disrespect for women.
I think I get what Bes is talking about wrt the ‘frontier spirit’ of women who grew up west of the Mississippi, but I don’t think there’s an east/west divide in our country when it comes to sexism/misogyny. After all, where is much of the misogyny coming from that’s broadcast into most of our homes nightly on the tv? Hollywood, which has almost single-handedly convinced the next generation coming up that the only fair use of women is as prey. Even sadder, there are girls growing up who actually think something is wrong with them when they don’t enjoy abuse.
The emanation of all this backlash misogyny is not just a bi-coastal phenomenon, either. I think Margaret Mead was actually onto something rather large when she noted differences between people who grow up in large cities vs people who come from rural backgrounds. I mean no disrespect to people who come from urban backgrounds, but I have seen what she’s talking about in real life when it comes to the tendency of people who’ve grown up in large cities to basically go along to get along. It’s probably a matter of survival in large cities to not piss off the wrong people who happen to live cheek by jowl with you, and it comes to be a way of life. I think Mead’s major contention was that people who grow up in the country have the space and time to find out their true character, who they really are at a young age, precisely because they have more personal freedom to go about this journey. I think it was Patsy Mink who made the observation that one of the reasons why she was always going against the flow was because she had developed an independent spirit roaming around the Hawaiian countryside as a girl, and there was nothing and no one who could ever take that away from her. I see that same thing in Sarah Palin, I think she’s a born contrarian; it was perfect that she ran as a maverick, although I don’t believe McCain’s half the maverick she is. Contrast this with Obama, who would do just about anything to curry favor with anyone who could help his career along. I haven’t read his first autobiography, but the snippets I read from Audacity of Hope suggest someone who’s always looking to win over, by any means necessary, someone who is fundamentally opposed to him. Where I come from, there’s a term for this type of person – a bs artist.
Judging by who got the tingles from the hope and change roadshow, the people in fly-over country have very keen bs detectors, having remained almost entirely tingle-free. I may quibble with their definitions of socialism and forget my manners when they start talking about casting demons out of engine blocks and the such, but I’m sticking with my fellow fly-over country people when it comes to basic judgements about who’s full of it. I also notice, having grown up around women who literally have done and continue to do everything, many of the men in fly-over country don’t feel intimidated by women like Hillary Clinton or Sarah Palin. It’s interesting, to say the least. The boys on the tv trash-talking all the female politicians probably didn’t get out of the house much when they were young, by the looks of them.
Kathleen, the outlook express email is Solarflare@att.net
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