May I please join your group....

[calimary]

29. Meh. Hey, they're VERY fired up. They believe they have a great candidate.

We should all be so lucky! And actually, many others of us ARE!

I think Bernie Sanders is a great candidate. If Hillary were not in the race, I would already be soundly encamped with the Bernie-ites. He's got a very good perspective and a nimble mind and LONG overdue ideas - many of which he's held and talked about for years. I've always wanted to hear that kind of stuff coming out of the mouth of my presidential candidate!

However, even longer than that, I've wanted to see a woman take the reins. I realized awhile back that I was actually a pretty staunch feminist (and PROUD of it, mind you!) from a pretty early age. Fifth grade or so. I don't know why I thought the way I thought, or why I felt as I did about certain things that I observed. I don't know what made me conclude the way I have, but it appears I was pretty far left from as early as I can remember, as far as slowly becoming aware and really present - as one leaves one's childhood.
- Like, why did I sit there and wonder silently WHY I should take anything seriously from one of the neighborhood priests who came over to our school once a week from the parish church to preside at catechism class - when he'd lecture about the proper Catholic marriage and family life. I'd be thinking - "how could you know? You don't have a wife, or kids. You've never been married, or had to go to work to support a family. How can you possibly know what it's like? How can you tell us who are actually living it how YOU think it's supposed to go?"
- Like, why did I start wondering why there weren't more women in big jobs. When I watched the news, as a kid during dinnertime because we ate dinner in front of the TV, and it was all men on there except for Pauline Frederick, Liz Trotta, and Catherine Mackin, I sat there and wondered where the women were? Why weren't there more girls on there? I was really pleased when NBC announced its coverage of the political conventions during election season, and I noticed when they presented a format with four chief correspondents. Guess what? One of 'em was a woman, Cassie Mackin, for a change! I think that was for 1968. When the Kennedy assassination happened, the big four were John Chancellor, Sander Vanocur, Edwin Newman, and Frank McGee. No women.
- I wondered about my mom's and my dad's roles in the family structure and wondering just why it was that the man was always the leader and women seemed secondary. You get that a lot in the Catholic Church. Women are second-class citizens. We can't say Mass. We can't climb the hierarchy and have full equal voice in how the church is run. No women in the College of Cardinals! So No women ever get a say in who becomes Pope. And I always was annoyed by that. Any answers to my "why" on that one were always insufficient and unacceptable.

I want a woman in that job.

All other things being equal - or mostly equal - THAT tips the scale for me.

A woman brings a different mentality, a different sensibility, a completely and chemically and organically different approach to the job. Harry Reid was interviewed recently and he was asked about what's been the biggest change in the Senate. Positive change, that is. He said the Senate got better when more women came in. He said with more women Senators, more has gotten accomplished. More work got done. Because women approach things differently. Women don't bring issues to the table that often come down to the very psychologically basic "whose is bigger?" Women don't have power-posturing on their minds and gamesmanship and rankings and vendettas and domination-obsessions. Women just get together and say "what's the problem? And how can we fix it?" And then they hunker down and start getting work done. That's what Harry Reid said. And he said he hoped that the future would find even more women joining that exclusive club-of-only-100, because then, seriously, more would get done.

We've had 44 Y-chromosomes in a row. There've been 44 Presidents of the United States and ALL 44 have been men. All 44 from the Testosterone Club. I'd frankly like to see what a dose of estrogen might do, instead. I want to see THAT mindset in charge, for a change. It's damn time, and we actually have a great candidate ready to go at this damn time! Things just aligned. And as I've pointed out many times, women's issues are so far on the back burner that they're not even on the stove anymore. Women's issues are second-class citizens too. And women's issues cross ALL boundaries, demographics, colors of skin, nationalities, and religious belief systems (or lack thereof). WHY is it still such a frickin' struggle to achieve income equality on the job? WHY are women STILL being paid less than men in comparable jobs? WHY are other issues important to working women - such as family leave, paid sick leave, pension protections, and yes - affordable health care (that absolutely impacts the workplace) such an uphill battle? WHY is it still nearly impossible to get anything done about affordable childcare so women even CAN overwork and get underpaid? WHY are we continuing to lose ground on a woman's right to choose? Why are so many women asking the same thing - WHY ARE WE STILL FIGHTING THIS? THIS WAS SETTLED!!!! DECADES AGO!!!!!

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Well, nothing else is working. Maybe we need to break that final glass ceiling and see if THAT will make any difference. Hillary actually mentioned the choice issue in her big speech. We need a champion there. Who better than a woman who is also President of the United States? I mean, come ON. It's time. How long are we going to be told to wait, to be patient, to go sit down because the man is gonna take the reins? How long are OUR issues going to go without the ultimate strong voice on our side? And oddly enough, we have a candidate who's spent a lifetime focusing on the issues directly affecting women and children. Here in America AND across the globe.

I want a woman in that job. It's just TIME, dammit.