Grab a cuppa something, kick back, and read this op-ed:

You've Come a Long Way, Ladies

By Tina Brown

Thursday, October 13, 2005; Page C01

The healthiest aspect of the Harriet Miers nomination is that women haven't rallied to her cause. Ten years ago, there would have been a lot of reflexive solidarity about keeping the Sandra Day O'Connor spot on the Supreme Court from reverting to male type. But every female lawyer I've spoken with in the past week skips right past the sisterly support into a rant about Miers's meager qualifications or her abject obeisance to power. The good news is that for women, it seems, Miers's nomination is like the moment for blacks in Hollywood when it was suddenly okay to cast an African American actor as something other than a perfect hero. The Sidney Poitier phase is definitively over.

Nevertheless, there's a feminist- or pre-feminist lesson here. Miers's whole story can be read as a cautionary tale for women on the move. It's about the sacrifices she made, the muzzled nature of her striving. The bleakest detail of Miers's r�©sum�© is that her decision to accept Jesus Christ as her savior took place at the office.

Read the rest here...registration is required, but free!

I'll give you my 2 cents after my lunch meeting.

I'm back!

I think that this op-ed is a good sign for feminism in general. Along with Lisa Jervis' piece that I mentioned a week ago, perhaps we are getting away from backing a woman simply because she is a woman. A generation has passed since just getting a woman on a board, elected, in a role was cause for celebration. Now we are at a point where we want to make sure that a feminist/humanist/womanist/progressive is at the table. Someone, woman or man, who will advance our rights, not strip them away. Lisa sums it up at the end of her piece:

If we cling to any gender categories at all, we lose out on tremendous liberatory potential. In other words, the half-witted, sentimental obsession with women that is femmenism causes sloppy thinking, intellectual dishonesty, and massive strategic errors.

Maggie Thatcher is always the example that I hear and I give (well, Condi's now the good example too) of why a woman leader is not always the given road to peace. Tina Brown in her op-ed tells Maggie why feminists should thank her for her service:

Happy Birthday, Lady T -- and hail to you and all the women who've gone before! You won us the freedom to say that if opting for a Harriet Miers means we risk getting not just a sycophant but a stem-cell-banning, abortion-denying, Bible-thumping presidential sycophant, maybe we'd just as soon have a guy.

And that is it. I'd rather have another white man on the Supreme Court, in office, as CEO if that white man will stand up for my rights. I don't need a Clarence Thomas, a Alberto Gonzalez, or a Condi Rice in a leadership position simply because they look like me, share the same gonads, or come from the same barrio.

The Right loves to poo-poo affirmative action, that is until they need to use it to ram some wacko-fundie into some position of authority. "You can't filibuster a Latina!" they cry. Why the hell not? You'd filibuster a bill that would create more educated Latinas if it called for subsidized child care, more student loans, or heck, just equity in school funding. So let's keep our eye on the prize, the end game. Do we want a world full of right-winged women or a world of diverse men and women working towards peace?

Oh...

And as we keep this in mind, we have to also realize that just because NOW is a woman's organization, it's really a feminist organization. And as such, NOW supports candidates who are feminist and sometimes has to decide who is the better feminist. So, get your panties out of your ass if you are a woman candidate and NOW doesn't endorse you. If you're pro-choice, pro-lesbian rights, and pro-everything that NOW stands for, then you're in, most likely, but even just one knock will allow the man candidate to jump in and snag that endorsement from you.

Chicago is set for one of those situations next year as we prep for the Cook Country elections. The last I heard there is a chance that a very feminist white male will run against a very feminist black woman. Who gets the nod from our local NOW PACs? Well, we have to look at their stances first - or should - and then we look at gender. I've had to explain this a zillion times, but in the event of a tie, NOW's commitment to seeing more women elected wins out. IN THE EVENT OF A TIE. So being a woman doesn't guarantee you a nod from NOW. Neither does knowing someone involved in NOW...or at least it shouldn't. But let's watch and see how it plays out, why don't we?

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