Women's Day For Real

                Last Tuesday was “Women’s Day” as declared by somebody. Sounds like a good idea for an annual thing. Mother’s Day doesn’t catch everybody. I’m all for honoring women as there are a few of them in my life that I regard as pretty special and I respect almost all others.

                Turns out though that the day sort of got hijacked by a group promoting “A Day Without A Woman,” which reminded me at first of some lonely weekends in college but the object was instead to apparently make us realize how awful the workplace would be without them…if I got the message right which may or may not be the case.

                So instead of going to work a bunch of women marched at various state capitols and other places, seemingly peacefully. News accounts boasted far fewer numbers than the Women’s March thingy right after Trump’s inauguration. As far as I noticed Madonna and Ashley Judd were too busy to lend voice to this particular “protest.”

                It took me most of the day and several newscasts to realize it was supposed to be a protest. I thought we were still on the honoring women thing.

                Trying to figure out what the protest was about got a little frustrating for me as it seemed even more nonspecific than the earlier Women’s March. One woman said she was marching for the voices of women that could not be heard. I’m not exactly sure what that means but it sounds noble and doesn’t raise any objection from me.

                Another woman gleefully announced that Tuesday marked her eighth protest since Donald Trump was inaugurated, so for some people I guess this is just a hobby now. Another said she was there to help make sure employers appreciated how valuable women were in the workplace.

                I kind of thought that was obvious or they wouldn’t have been hired in the first place but I’m sort of thick skulled sometimes. Maybe it was a statement about pay discrepancies v. men or something.

                Many said they were just protesting Donald Trump. Well that is specific, I guess, without having much of a point.

                If my prior research is applicable, however, many of them are really afraid they are going to lose the right to an abortion granted them under the Roe V. Wade decision. Even though the resulting law has stood since 1973.

 

               Even though President’s Reagan, H.W. Bush and G.W. Bush (20 years of dreaded Republican White House Rule) were all personally opposed to the decision and weren’t able to get it changed. I don’t think they even tried. Reaching way back I’m not totally sure ultra-religious Jimmy Carter (D-GA) was ok with abortion, but whether he was or wasn’t that right has been on the books for 43 years.

                Trump has already said he thinks it should be a state-level decision rather than a federal-level decision which isn’t the same thing as calling for abortion abolition. Planned Parenthood may lose it’s federal funding. That may be a legitimate gripe for some women. But paying for abortions through Planned Parenthood with federal tax dollars has also been a legitimate issue for those opposed to that.

                Listen, I don’t want to get into a discussion of abortion pros and cons with only 500 words left in my blog but I can understand people with religious or moral objections to abortions not wanting to pay for them. I can also understand women who can’t afford to pay for them needing somewhere to go for help. But Planned Parenthood doesn’t have to go away. It just may not get any federal funding anymore which will mean private sources will have to put their money where their mouths are and step up and keep PP afloat. And, if a young lady has the means, she just may have to pay for her own abortion.

                But I think to work one’s self into hysteria over the safety of Roe V. Wade is a fool’s errand.  If Justice Scalia didn’t tip the scales in abolishing Roe V. Wade, Justice Gorsuch isn’t going to either. I don’t think any combination of justice’s will but as I said, that’s enough discussion here.

                I guess some women also don’t like Trump because his personality reminds them of something sinister or evil or worse. Ok, I get that. He did get caught on a mic talking about grabbing a woman’s vagina in some guy talk. That is both a disgusting and disappointing thing for the President to have said and or done.

                I’ve got news for you though ladies, most of your fathers, brothers, husbands, male cousins, classmates and friends have all said things about women to their guy friends that they would never have said in front of you ever, ever, ever.  If you don’t believe me see if your husband looks up and to the left when you confront him with this question, if he can even make eye contact at all.

                Sorry fella’s.

                It doesn’t make it right or excuse it, I’m just sayin’. And the more vehement you liberal guys who want to pretend it isn't so are about denying it the more suspect I am of your chaste purity.

                Plus we all seem to have survived Bill Clinton’s sexual assaults, dalliances and questionable judgements and figured out what to tell our daughters for goodness sake. Not that two wrongs make a right but I’m not even sure we’re comparing apples to oranges here.

                Trump never had to write Hillary’s staffer of five years a check to get her to shut up about the alleged groping on a plane like Bill did for several of his accusers. No, she just kind of went away when the election was over. Nor did the lady who said Trump assaulted her at a Stevie Wonder concert in San Francisco that Wonder says never took place get any Trump bucks.  In fact she went away before the election when her story about the concert got blown.

Were there others? Were they any more credible? Good grief.

                By the way, it is not a defensible argument to say one is “so tired of hearing about Bill Clinton’s indiscretions. He wasn’t running for president.”

                Well not this time. But because you don’t care doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. I mean semen on a dress is kind of evidentiary. And by most household definitions that would be a result of sex of some kind. I asked.

                So we could bat this stuff around all day but the whole doggone point I wanted to make before I wasted my thousand words is this:  We should have honored women on Tuesday.

                I wish I had heard more about it and known it was coming. I’d have taken my wife a chai latte at the office or something.

                I think we owe a round of applause, gratitude and respect to every single woman who went to work last Tuesday like she always does. Or to class or who took care of her children or who simply graced us with her presence.

                God bless you ladies, and thank you for being part of our lives.

                We are darned lucky, unappreciative, chauvinist, misogynistic, ungrateful bastards. And I hope those of you who matter to us know that I don’t think we are any of those things. We love you and we are so very, very grateful for you.

 

             For you, Tuesday should have been a bigger deal.

Thank you.