The Feminist Francophile

It has been stated that one does not fully understand an issue unless a person has gone through it. The ERA is one of those issues for me. The ERA (Equal Rights Amendment) was initially proposed to Congress in 1920s. For over fifty years, feminist groups have lobbied for the amendment, not truly gaining traction until the 70s. Anti-Feminists movements, mostly led by Phyllis Schlafly, rallied against the ERA, claiming that it would harm women more than help them. In fact, that has been the reasoning for most legislation that was designed for women’s equality: by making women equal, they will in fact be harmed. How sweet. How thoughtful. How patriarchal.

To give a perspective of the anti-feminists flawed logic in what they viewed would be harming women, let me draw an example. Phyllis Schlafly and others like her stated that the ERA would allow women to have equal access to employment (oh no!) and therefore would be able to work “manly” jobs without being discriminated against. Women would be able to work in places like mines, which would require them to lift heavy objects, which the anti-feminists would claim harmed women because we just might hurt ourselves (we are very clumsy gender, are we not?). Granted these groups never took into account that heavy lifting is required in jobs that are more socially acceptable for women such as childcare, secretarial work, nursing, and so forth. Apparently, women are too stupid to take care of ourselves in inherently dangerous (or not) workplaces without hurting ourselves. On the other hand, maybe it is because women working a variety of employment that might pay more would allow women to escape being solely dependant on her husband, and we just cannot have that. What is next-women thinking for themselves? By the way, may I bring to attention how I find it somewhat hypocritical that some women like Ms.Schlafly are able to climb the ladder to success yet work tirelessly to make sure women have a difficult time gaining the same authority and notoriety? Just a thought to hang your hat on.

Nevertheless, before you get outraged, just remember, that those anti-ERA groups were only trying to protect our mothers. Obviously, as I stated at the beginning, I was not around during the precipice of the ERA. Reading my history books and talking to feminists who fought the fight over 30 years ago, I wondered what is so controversial about equal rights especially in today’s climate where we as a society believe, falsely, that we live in a post-feminist nation. I wonder what could possible be the reason today for not enforcing equal pay and punishing discrimination. Why is it so hard to pass such legislation? How dumb were those legislators and states who opposed the ERA? What were they thinking?

This brings me to the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. The Act was brought before Congress this past spring and failed. First, I will give you the background. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act started out as a critical Supreme Court case: Ledbetter v. Goodyear, 127 S.Ct. 2162. First the facts. Lilly Ledbetter worked for Goodyear for 19 years before accepting an early retirement offer. Shortly before she left Goodyear, Ledbetter received an anonymous memo revealing that the other shift supervisors with the same title and job responsibilities she had, were paid between 14-30% more than what she was earning. The decision to pay Ledbetter less than her male co-workers was made years earlier by a supervisor who did not believe women belonged at Goodyear, and certainly not working as supervisors. Until Ledbetter got this memo, she had no knowledge that she made less than her co-workers did all those years. Ledbetter sued, and during the discovery of the lawsuit, Goodyear’s records confirmed the anonymous tip: the sole woman supervisor was paid far less than the men in the same positions were paid.

A jury found that Goodyear had unlawfully discriminated against Ledbetter and awarded her $224,000 in back pay, $4,600 in mental anguish and $3.2 million dollars in punitive damages. Goodyear appealed, and the appellate court sided with Goodyear finding that Ledbetter was barred from bringing a lawsuit because she did not file a complaint within six months of when her supervisor made the discriminatory decision to pay her less than the men. Finally, the case went to the Supreme Court, which decided in a 5-4 conservative majority opinion that shielded employers from liability unless an employee discovers the pay discrimination and acts on that information within 180 days. The dissenting opinion written by the sole woman justice, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and joined by three male justices (Stevens, Souter, and Breyer) raised an issue that the Court’s majority decision blatantly ignored: the reality of the workplace and common characteristics of pay discrimination. As most who have ever worked a job realize, workers rarely, if ever, have knowledge of how much they are making compared to the co-workers doing the same or similar jobs or the factors employers take into account in making pay decisions- not to mention that many employers specifically bar its employees from discussing their pay. Let it be said that the majority’s opinion goes against most appellate courts (granted, not the appellate court in Ledbetter’s case) and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EEOC) longstanding position that every unequal paycheck, based upon discrimination, is a new violation, therefore starting the statute of limitations clock again. At the end of Ginsberg’s dissenting opinion, she noted that it is now Congress’ duty and invited the legislature to correct the Court’s “parsimonious reading of Title VII.”

The House of Representatives, with the help of many Civil Rights groups, passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which would have reinstated the law that the EEOC and most appellate courts interpreted Title VII. However, once the bill went to the Senate for approval, forty-two members of the Senate voted to block cloture. The unabashed action of the US Senate has and does astonish me. Many of the Republicans who blocked the vote to reinstate the original reading of Title VII claimed they were doing so to protect women (read “stupid women”)from the greedy clutches of unprincipled plaintiffs’ attorneys and from women’s own stupid inclination to sit around for years, decades even, while being screwed over financially before they bring suit. That means they were, of course, just protecting us from the dangerous laws that protect us. THANK GOD! Women in the United States are paid only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men; African-American women earn only 63 cents, and Latinas earn only 52 cents for every dollar paid to white men. Yet the Ledbetter decision tells employers that as long as they can hide their discriminatory behavior for six months, they have the green light to treat female employees badly forever. Why is this problem not sufficiently real to be addressed by Congress?

It seems that several people in government have attempted to answer that question. Can guess what their concerned about? Of course, the answer is protecting women, or in their view- stupid women, who just cannot seem to think for themselves. Ladies, when will our brains evolve to be on par with men? Let us look at the reasons they proffered:

The White House threatened to veto the legislation if it ever passed Congress because the act would “impede justice and undermine the important goal of having allegations of discrimination expeditiously resolved.” Of course, there is a place for finality in the law, and it is not reasonable to bring allegations against businesses for actions that were committed twenty years back. Nevertheless, unless an employee is psychic, one hundred and eighty days is simply not long enough to decipher a pattern of pay discrimination, which is normally subtle not obvious. The notion that expeditiousness in resolving legal disputes should altogether trump one’s ability to prove those disputes is cynical beyond imagining. Moreover, the very notion that extending the statute of limitations somehow encourages scads of stupid women to loll around accepting unfair wages for decades in the hopes of hitting the litigation jackpot in their mid 70s is just insulting.

Next on the list is a statement by Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah. The Senator did one better in insulting women when he said, “The only ones who will see an increase in pay are some of the trial lawyers who bring the cases.” See, now this is the argument that holds that the same women who are too stupid to bring timely discrimination claims are also too stupid to avoid manipulation by those scheming plaintiffs’ attorneys. First off, some of us still believe that those damn civil rights attorneys do some good in the world. But what really infuriates me here is the endless, snobbish recitation that it is only the really dumb people—you know, the injured, the sick, and the women—who are not smart enough to avoid being conned by lawyers into filing frivolous lawsuits.

All of which brings me to Senator John McCain, a Republican from Arizona(who, by the time you read this, may or may not have won the presidential election) skipped the vote on equal pay vote altogether because he was out campaigning. (Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both showed up to support it.) McCain’s opposition to the bill was expressed thusly: He is familiar with the pay disparity but believes there are better ways to help women find better-paying jobs. “They need the education and training, particularly since more and more women are heads of their households, as much or more than anybody else.” All of that is code for the imperceptive claim that the fact that women earn 77 cents on the dollar for the same work as men will somehow be fixed by more training for women as opposed to less discrimination by men. Now, this makes me wonder. McCain has at least one daughter. If she ever came home to tell him the same situation of Ledbetter happened to her, would he really stay to her face that she needs more training, rather than telling her that she was discriminated against. I think not.

So, forty two members of the U.S. Senate blocked a bill that would allow victims of gender discrimination to learn of and prove discrimination in those rare cases in which their employers do not cheerfully discuss it with them at the office Christmas party. And the reasons for blocking it include the fact that women are not smart enough to file timely lawsuits, not smart enough to avoid being manipulated by vile plaintiffs’ lawyers, not smart enough to know when they are being stiffed, and (per John McCain) not well-trained enough in the first place to merit equal pay. So how dumb are we as a nation? Unfortunately, the next generation, thirty plus years down the road, will have to tell me.

You know what makes me mad? I know; there's a lot of things that make me upset. But one of the things that has the potential to send me to a fiery tirade is when people >cough, Christians, cough< feel the need to point out that we are a Christian nation founded by Christians. OK first, one needs to describe "founded" and "nation". Are you talking about when the pilgrims came to America to set up shop? Are you talking about Chris and his three boats in the Caribbean? Or are you speaking of the Founding Fathers signing the Declaration of Independence and/or The Constitution?

What made me so up set was an article written by Juanell Garrett. What she insinuates throughout her article is what many crazy people point to: that kicking god out of schools in the 60s caused the down fall of mankind. Garrett and others are referring to Abington Township School District v. Schempp; this is the infamous case that stated that organized bible study was unconstitutional. By the way, let me just add that all this ruling did was state that the schools can not sponsor a religion of any kind. If during study hall, a student wants to whip out his Bible and read, then so be it. Garrett finds this to be a line in the sand in American morality:

I blame something else: the expulsion of God from public schools following Supreme Court decisions in 1962 and 1963.
In the following decade, birthrates for girls 15-19 increased 50 percent, and gonorrhea rates in that same age group more than tripled. Violent crimes increased 170 percent while the population grew by only 12 percent.
One thing went down. SAT scores, which had peaked in 1963, started a steady regression in 1964.

Here's the problem with Garrett's argument. The bad thing about having only one life is that we have a tendency to view that this one that we are living in is the worse time ever. Especially with humans, we have this ability to romance the past, sometimes it seems like we are living in an absolute shithole.

Starting with her erroneous statement about the SAT scores, because I could find info on that faster, she makes the wonderful mistake that most people like her make: ignoring some facts that could be detrimental to the overall browbeating. Garrett is right-SATs did drop in 1963, BUT it made a "miraculous turnabout" in 1982. Like I said before, we always like to think we are living in the worse moment in history. I think it's because of our narcissism. It's quite annoying you know.

As for the STDs, well, those nasty little buggers have been around forever. And since Ms. Garrett thinks that the world was a charming cartoon before the "I hate god" 60s, take a look at what I found. Oh and before I go further, I am not bashing the military. But I think most people know about some of the trysts that men in the military engaged in. I've even heard some stories from the horse's mouth. All right... moving forward. Apparently our little friend, gonorrhea, has been around for a long time. Someone queue in George Washington, Ethan Allen, and those Mountain Boys:

…gonorrhea and syphilis, were significant disease threats before the availability of penicillin in the middle
1940s.Medical records from the Revolutionary War indicate that these STDs had a significant impact in terms of lost person-days among members of the Continental Army.

Oh it gets worse.

In World War I, the Army lost nearly 7million person-days and discharged more than 10,000 men because of STDs. Only the great influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 accounted for more loss of duty during that war. The STDs remained a significant threat in the early years of WorldWar II, prompting the War Department to embark on a massive educational and prophylactic campaign. Numerous posters were produced, warning soldiers and sailors of the dangers of excessively amorous behavior.

Gross, right? Seems that those men's bible circle in school didn't really help much, now did it?

Even with all this contradiction in her article, I'm sure you must be thinking how could there be more? But there is. Going back to my original paragraph- we are not a christian nation. Got that? NOT!! The founding of our nation, which I personally state as the signing of the Constitution, was based upon the ideas of the Enlightenment and the writings of John Locke. In fact, James Madison, the Father of our Constitution, who I love, stated such:

The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores
the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries.

Doesn't sound like someone who likes religion to meddle in government. Granted, most people may not know Madison. So here are some that people should:

John Adams signing the Treaty of Tripoli:

As the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen [Muslims] ... it is declared ... that no pretext arising from religious opinion shall ever product an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries....
The United States is not a Christian nation any more than it is a Jewish or a Mohammedan nation.

Abraham Lincoln to Judge JS Wakefield:

My earlier views of the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the scriptures, have become clearer and stronger with advancing years and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them

And the big man himself, George Washington writing to clergymen about why Jesus Christ was missing from the Constitution:

I am persuaded, you will permit me to observe that the path of true piety is so plain as to require but little political direction. To this consideration we ought to ascribe the absence of any regulation, respecting religion, from the Magna-Charta of our country.

This blog has a lot of quotes, but I believe this final one by Justice William Brennan, who wrote a concurrent decision in the Abington Township School District v. Schempp, is a fantastic ending:

There are persons in every community—often deeply devout—to whom any version of the Judaeo-Christian Bible is offensive. There are others whose reverence for the Holy Scriptures demands private study or reflection and to whom public reading or recitation is sacrilegious.... To such persons it is not the fact of using the Bible in the public schools, nor the content of any particular version, that is offensive, but the manner in which it is used.

Whatever Jefferson or Madison would have thought of Bible reading or the recital of the Lord's Prayer in ... public schools ..., our use of the history ... must limit itself to broad purposes, not specific practices. ... [T]he Baltimore and Abbington schools offend the First Amendment because they sufficiently threaten in our day those substantive evils the fear of which called forth the Establishment Clause. ... [O]ur interpretation of the First Amendment must necessarily be responsive to the much more highly charged nature of religious questions in contemporary society. A too literal quest for the advice of the Founding Fathers upon the issues of these cases seems to me futile and misdirected.