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Women Are the Most Important Political Force in America

amanda88

Well-known member
The best and worst part about being a professional troublemaker is that the trouble never ends, Cecile Richards writes in her new memoir, Make Trouble.
220px-Cecile_Richards_%2830015306461%29.jpg

She should know. Though she is now president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Richard’s leadership and activism, organizing and civil disobedience in the name of social justice, spans virtually her entire life. Even before the work with women’s reproductive rights, her career took her from worksites in New Orleans and East Texas, where she organized hotel and nursing home workers, to Washington, D.C., where during a gap year from college she was involved in efforts to implement Title IX, the law, passed five years earlier, requiring men and women have equal opportunity to education.

As head of what is perhaps the most visible symbol of feminism in this country, Richards routinely faces down attacks from anti-abortion and far-right foes and has fended off repeated efforts to defund and derail the women’s healthcare organization. Perhaps no single episode has raised her public profile as much as the five-hour grilling she endured by Republican male members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in 2015.

“Here’s what I learned sitting in front of that committee,” Richards writes in her book, Make Trouble: Standing Up, Speaking Out, and Finding the Courage to Lead. “Focus on the people who are counting on you, not the ones who are trying to drag you down.”

Now, as she prepares to leave Planned Parenthood after 12 years, her sentiments about never-ending trouble seem inarguable. Uncertainty hangs over women’s rights issues in this country, from reproductive health to the gender pay gap. The Guttmacher Institute reports that, between 2010 and 2016, states enacted more than 330 measures to restrict abortion access. Meanwhile, the #MeToo movement continues to unmask a sexist, if not misogynistic, underbelly.

“For the first time in my life, I’m wondering whether my own daughters will have fewer rights than I’ve had,” writes Richards, the mother of two daughters and a son. “That alone is enough motivation for me to keep making trouble.”

You could say she was born into her role of troublemaker. Her mother was the late Ann Richards, who turned a career as a homemaker in a conservative state into one of progressive activism and politics to become the first female governor of modern-era Texas. Her name had become familiar to Americans during the 1988 Democratic National Convention in Atlanta when she famously derided then-Republican presidential nominee George H.W. Bush: “Poor George. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth.”

She describes a life surrounded by kickass women. “At every job I’ve had, I’ve tried to work for someone who could teach me something—and more often than not that someone has been a woman.”

At age 16, she worked on the Texas House of Representatives campaign of Sarah Weddington, the ambitious young attorney who had argued the case of Jane Roe in Roe v Wade before the U.S Supreme Court in 1973. “It was a really tough race, and I saw firsthand how ugly it could be for a woman to run for office,” she says.

She worked in the office of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the highest-ranking woman in the U.S House of Representatives, admiring her courage and determination in going against her party leadership on the invasion of Iraq and then persuading the majority of House Democrats to go along with her in voting against it. She crisscrossed the country campaigning for Hillary Clinton in battleground states. Speaking at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia in 2016 Richards said, “Tonight we are closer than ever to putting a woman in the White House. And I can almost hear mom saying, ‘well, it sure took y’all long enough.”
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Of course, that didn’t happen.

After the election, Planned Parenthood was heading into a “battle of a lifetime,” she wrote. As a candidate, Trump promised to defund the organization, and House Speaker Paul Ryan vowed to repeal Obamacare.

But her organization was used to this. At one point, four congressional committees were investigating it, more than were assigned to investigate Enron in the 2008 global financial crisis.

With more than 100 years of research in reproductive health, Planned Parenthood is the nation’s largest provider of sex education resources and affordable health care—for both men and women. In 2016, it served more than 2.4 million patients.

When a Republican-controlled Congress passed a bill to defund it in 2015, President Obama vetoed it. Nearly every “knock-down-drag-out fight over the Affordable Care Act had to do with women’s health,” she writes.

She recalls a scene in the Capitol visitor center before a news conference to announce Planned Parenthood’s support for Obamacare. Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, the longest-serving woman in Congress, jumped up on her trademark step stool, pulled out her bright red lipstick, and smearing it on declared, “Get ready women, we are going to war.”

Just before passage of Obamacare, a last-minute proposal was introduced, with support from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, to prevent insurance plans from covering abortions under the law. The Stupak Amendment, as it was called, went against everything Planned Parenthood stood for. Eventually it was removed, but only after intense lobbying.

“Without the women in the House and Senate, it would have been a different story,” Richards writes. “I firmly believe that when half of Congress can get pregnant, we will finally stop arguing about birth control, abortions and Planned Parenthood—and we might even fully fund women’s health care.”

Richards believes that now, more than ever, women are the most important political force in America. “We have enormous power to change the direction of this country, and its time to use it.”

Ann Richards’ 1991 gubernatorial campaign was an inspiration to women across Texas and beyond. “Everywhere I went, women my mom’s age and with her hairdo would grab me by the arm and say, “I never thought I’d see the day".

(https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/women-are-most-important-political-force-america)
 

armedoldhippy

Well-known member
Veteran
"most important political force in America" yes, yes they are. and they are only going to gain in power. the simple fact that they live years longer on average than men do illustrates this very clearly. they get to vote more years, so...:tiphat: rock on, ladies! lead us into the future!:woohoo:
 

armedoldhippy

Well-known member
Veteran
Women are a scary political force because they always want to ban everything fun. Weed, guns, drugs, etc.

lots of women are into those very things. even the little old ladies where my wife & i go to church know that guns are not the problem, & that weed should be legal. some drugs ARE a problem. everyone i know looks at weed as a solution, not a problem. the laws AGAINST it are a problem... the leaders of many campaigns against these issues ARE women, many times women who watched family members hurt themselves. ladies (many of them) are more hard-wired as nurturing/caring. if not, many of us would not be alive today...:tiphat:
 

shithawk420

Well-known member
Veteran
LMAO!all I'm gonna say is that my mom hates Trump with a passion.boy she hates him.me?they are all the same
 

oldbootz

Active member
Veteran
I don't care for the WWE show they call politics. But I do support equality for the genders and I think it would be refreshing to see america vote a female president. Although I dont think females will have any more or less success than the current males in power.
 

GMT

The Tri Guy
Veteran
Women prefer to conform than men do, and so act more as a unified force than men. Therefore I have to agree with the opening proposistion. However, that being said, due to the same reasoning, are less progressive than individual males.
As for feminism, it wasn't meant as a drum to beat as men were beaten down, but rather to encourage women to build themselves up to. Women, and speaking in general, there are always exceptions, keep asking men to give them things, equal power, equal pay etc. Why not just take it rather than asking men's permission? That just reinforces the impression of a weaker, more subservient sex. Which certainly isn't the aim of femminism.
 

Weird

3rd-Eye Jedi
Veteran
I would give my take on a woman's perspective but personally I don't identify as one

where did all the women of IC go anyways?

lol
 

Nannymouse

Well-known member
Women have come a long way, but it has been a LONG HARD ROAD. As a young mouse, i was ELATED to see titleIX 'make it'. Didn't take long to see that it wasn't going to budge 'the way of things' for many decades.

I gasped to hear a female say that women are too stupid to be allowed to vote.

Keep at it gals, and let your kids know that they have to fight to keep it, cuz there is always someone in power that wishes things to go back to 'the good ol days'.

If men were in the position of women today and had the same past, well, i doubt that men can even relate very well. It was quite the revelation when my honey was laid off, so i went to work cleaning houses for cash, and HE babysat our two and another two for two weeks. I think that we agreed on who handled the role reversal better, emotionally.

Emotions. We all have them. Add testosterone as fuel. (i've had testosterone therapy, OMG, OMG, OMG, i've had thoughts about maybe men should not be allowed in leadership, at all, after that.)
 

yesum

Well-known member
ICMag Donor
Veteran
Testosterone is a potent chemical and does make men crazy, at least younger men. I find many women to be too protective or seeking the safe way of things. At times that does not work so well.

Banning anything that could be harmful sounds good but freedom is important to a lot of us. Trump has very little testosterone in him at this time so that is not driving him. Obama never seemed to have that much testosterone even being fairly young. Not a fan of him at all.

If they catch the Compton shooter he will just serve a few years time in jail. He should be executed. You can thank females for some of the current political direction of not executing anyone at all, no matter how certain of guilt they are and deserving of it.
 

Nannymouse

Well-known member
Deserving. If your actions or inactions caused tens of thousands of deaths, would you be 'deserving'? The word is reflective of a subjective stance. Laws vary from state to state. Is a person in one state more deserving than a person of another state, that commits the same crime? Yay, ethics class, it shook many of my 'rock solid' stances. Just because a state allows or encourages killing someone for a crime, does not necessarily make it RIGHT, or some states are right and some are wrong. Why would the Compton shooter be more deserving than a willingly negligent mass murderer?

I'm not being snarky, just trying to understand the lines that you draw for yourself, on who is deserving.

As far as more women being the cause of fewer state sanctioned deaths, could it be that they take the ten commandments a bit more to heart? Is it because they know what it takes to create a life and nurture that life? Is it because they think that the 'oops we made a mistake' instances are too many? Is it an overload of compassion? Or is the question really why do more men go for the killum idea? I dunno.

Freedom...it's important to people, but when that freedom causes sicknesses and death to others, is that worth it? A gal actually intentionally coughed in a friend's face when he politely asked for her to give him more space in a grocery store. Who deserves that sort of freedom? Yes, go out in the wilderness and blow that covid at the trees, go for it. Otherwise, it's like the 'freedom' to drive a vehicle into a crowd.

I once read that the word 'should' should be banned, and replaced with the word 'could'.

I have little hope for humanity.
 

GOT_BUD?

Weed is a gateway to gardening
ICMag Donor
Veteran
"A woman would never create a nuclear weapon. They'd make a weapon that would make you feel bad every 28 days."

-Robin Williams
 

Nannymouse

Well-known member
What has bloody ginas got to do with women being politically interested or powerful?

Men (usually) have junk dangling between their legs, occasionally have brown streaked undies, and they manage to be interested in politics.

That said, we'd probably make a weapon that would have you guys spit a ten pound bowling ball out your butt and then bleed for a few weeks afterward, too. Then tell you that you should spit out that bowling ball maybe once a year, and create laws that keep you from preventing those bowling balls from forming. We could call it God's will, cuz She gave women the power to do so.

This is fun.
 

Nannymouse

Well-known member
Naw, the doctors will give you a little slice to help the bowling ball get out. However, you will need to try to push that bowling ball out while the doc has you positioned upside down.
 

armedoldhippy

Well-known member
Veteran
Naw, the doctors will give you a little slice to help the bowling ball get out. However, you will need to try to push that bowling ball out while the doc has you positioned upside down.

i noticed that watching my two being born. looked counter-productive as hell to me, fighting gravity like that.
 

subrob

Well-known member
ICMag Donor
Veteran
Holy fucking shit. I NEVER thought the ignorant posts from Trump humpers on Trump humping threads could be topped!
But half of these posts so far are so fukn ignorant it's, I'd say laughable, but it's not anymore. You ass backwards incel jail punks are so fukn stupid that it can't even be blamed on you. It is your parents' fault! Your parents set you up to be the failures that you undoubtedly are today. Go fuck your ignorant selves.

And @amanda...I'm sure you were prepared for these retarded ass punks to spew their patently ignorant shit outta their word holes, but understand, there are plenty of intelligent people here too. But we are getting sooooo tired of debunking the conservative horse shit that dribbles out of cuck mouths here. Please don't take offense if the majority of the community doesn't decide to engage in ANOTHER round of proving pot growers aren't ignorant republican slugs.
 
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