Make sure every like-minded person you know votes

Talk to (almost) everyone

Talk to (almost) everyone about voting. I was canvassing with one of my candidates yesterday in my neighborhood and two men walking past us overheard me mention World Series tickets, which drew them into conversation with me. I took the opportunity to introduce them to my candidate and we talked for about ten minutes.

Turns out the guy was new to the neighborhood and had not registered to vote. He had put a sign for my candidate’s opponent in his yard for the primary, but hadn’t bothered to vote because he and his wife had gone out of town. (My candidate’s primary opponent didn’t understand that signs don’t vote.)

New Guy supports my candidate, so I told him how to register and vote. (Wisconsin has same-day registration.) I told him how to register and vote and then I got him to *promise* that he and his wife would walk the two blocks to city hall to vote. I will knock on their door in a few days to follow up.

In Wisconsin, the past several elections have been won or lost by an average of three votes per ward.

In one ten-minute conversation, I found two votes for my candidates.

You can also do this! Engage people you already know or people who you think might be like-minded. Help them find their polling place and tell them what they will need to register and vote. You can start at Vote.org, which will give you information by state.

If you are so inclined, knock on doors. There will be events near you and you can partner with an experienced person. Or you could just leave campaign information at people’s doors. (It’s way too expensive to do mass mailings – volunteer labor is essential.) You can text for your candidate as well.

These last two weeks we need to get out the vote. This is not about trying to change people’s minds – it’s about talking to voters who already support Democratic ideas and making sure they go to the polls. Go directly to your candidate’s page to find opportunities or go to Mobilize.us to find events by location.

People can change

I used to vote for Republicans. After Scott Walker in Wisconsin, I started leaning left. In 2016, I leaned even further. Now, my mission in life is to make sure no Republican is ever elected again and to put Democratic women in public office.

My mom has had her own journey.

In 2016, she voted for trump because of abortion.

It didn’t even take her a year to realize what a horrible person he was. My mom, whom I had never heard talk about politics before, starting talking about what a horrible president he was.

In 2020, she absolutely did not want to vote for trump but was reluctant to vote for Biden because of – still – abortion.

In 2022, she volunteered as a pollworker.

Last month, when I was with her at the ER, she started talking to the nurse about how she never thought our country would be here. About how awful trump was. I had already felt out the nurse and he was definitely aligned with us, but here’s my mom, who again, used to avoid talk of politics, hooked up to the monitors, wearing a hospital gown, conversing with a complete stranger about politics.

Yesterday, she told me she had completed her ballot and was going to return it.

“I voted for all Democrats,” she said. “I don’t understand why people would vote otherwise. There are a lot of people who haven’t been paying attention.”

I have given up on standardized sizing for women’s clothes

The most desperate of circumstances forced me to go to an actual store to buy pants today: my black skirt is too tight.

It went as well as you might expect for someone who has neither bought nor even worn pants (other than jeans) in at least the past 20 years.

The only reason I even considered such drastic action is that one of my volunteer usher gigs requires us to wear black pants or skirt and my black skirt, as I mentioned, is too tight. I guess I could buy another black skirt but I am also reaching the “lots of varicose veins and now I get why older women wear pants” stage of my life.

(Also I guess I could diet but I don’t want to.)

I have neither bought not worn pants for the past 20 years for the simple reason that pants do not fit my body. Apparently, my ass and thighs are weirdly disproportionate to my waist, so if the butt fits, the waist does not and vice versa.

I do not need that kind of negativity in my life.

And yet, here I was, forced to go to a clothing store to try on pants because if there is one lesson life has taught me it’s that even though I can buy skirts, dresses, and jeans online (with brands where I already know what size fits), pants will always break your heart.

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The first thing I noticed is that shopping has become a hobby again. TJMaxx was near the neighborhood where Mr T and I had been knocking doors for our candidates, so we thought we would just run in on our way home.

In my defense, I have not been to a clothing store on a Saturday afternoon in years and years and years.

Now I know where all the people who did not answer their doors when we were canvassing were. Shopping is now the thing people do on a beautiful autumn Saturday. The store was jam packed.

The second thing I noticed is what you all already know: there is no such thing as size for women’s pants.

I tried on five different pairs of pants, some medium, some large, some sized with numbers – and what was written on the label had nothing to do with how they fit.

I also noticed what we all notice: the concept of pockets for women’s pants is still unknown to designers.

Also, when did all clothes become athleisure? Not that I have anything against athleisure. My usual clothing, if I am not wearing jeans, is athleisure. I like stretchy and comfy.

But pants? I expect pants to close with a zipper and not to envelop my calves and thighs and ass like saran wrap. That is, if I can put these pants on without even opening a zipper, they are too stretchy for the theatre. Hard clothes should have zippers.

Nothing at TJMaxx worked, so we went next door to Old Navy, where we encountered 10s, 12s, and 14s in different styles, some of which fit, some of which did not. The number on the label did not necessarily correlate to anything and definitely did not mean anything across styles. The 10 in one style was fine but too tight in another.

Although at least the Old Navy pants have zippers.

And pockets. Sort of.

I was wearing athleisure tights so just took off my tennies and pulled various pairs of pants, thinking that if they fit over my tights, they would fit over my skin, while Mr T searched through the stacks, complaining about the mess, folding and organizing by size, and handing me various sizes and critiquing the look.

Don’t laugh he actually has a really good eye.

Despite that, I picked the flared-leg pants just because they were the only ones that fit. He did not like them but I just wanted to complete the mission.

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(We did ask the young woman restocking the shelves if they had the style we liked in my size. They did not. Then I asked if she was old enough to vote because she looked like she was about 12 but she was actually 18 and not registered to vote so I showed her how to register on her phone and she promised she would do it when she got home that night.)

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And then I went online this morning and discovered if I order the pants from their website, I get another $10 off.

And then I went to eBay and discovered a used version of these pants for half the OG price.

The only trauma that remains for me is returning the OG pants.

Do I even exist if a man doesn’t somehow acknowledge me?

At the theatre where I am a volunteer usher, I was writing postcards, waiting for the show to start.

I was minding my own business. The house manager had told the other usher in my section – an older white man – and me what to do and I had returned to my postcards. Head down, hand moving.

I was not paying attention to anything or anyone else.

And yet.

The other usher – let’s call him Tom the Talker, or TT for short – started complaining to me about the ushering strategy being used in another section.

Wait.

TT started complaining to me. It doesn’t even matter what it was about.

He launched into a complaint.

No “Hi I’m TT what’s your name?”

No “Have you ushered here before?”

No “I’m really interested in what Ayad Akhtar has to say tonight, aren’t you?”

Just straight into a complaint about how someone else wasn’t doing something right.

Just straight into a monologue that I was supposed to listen to.

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Remember the guy behind me in line at the library who kept talking to me?

This was the same thing.

Am I wearing a sign that says, “TALK TO ME PLEASE I WILL NOT SURVIVE WITHOUT YOUR WHITE MAN WISDOM?”

Or are all of us expected to drop everything to listen to the gems dropping from the open mouths of certain men?

Why do they assume that as soon as they open their mouths, we will open our ears?

Why do they assume that we want to hear what they have to say?

Why do they assume we have nothing of our own?

Do they think we spend all of our time just wishing and waiting for A Man to talk?

Do they think we are like dogs who wait behind the side door for their people to re-appear, for whom there is no world without a human?

(I don’t know if dogs actually think that, but I have seen it posited.)(In cartoons about object permanence.)(But still.)

Who am I if a man is not talking to me?

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I learned from Library Guy experience.

I ignored TT completely.

I mean – how was I to know if he was addressing me? He never said anything to get my attention – to indicate that he wished to engage in conversation with me. Instead, he just jumped on a soapbox and started lecturing. Was I supposed to know that I was the designated listener?

(Wow and my instinct is still to think of some kind of plausible deniability – a good reason for why I was not engaging with him that is on me, not on him. My instinct is still – even when I am thinking about this exact thing – to diminish myself and find a reason for him not to get angry with me.)

I kept my head down. I kept my hand moving.

And he finally left.

Turns out my dad’s advice all those years ago to ignore the boy who is annoying you was actually correct.

We exist so men can feel better about themselves

Y’all, I hate to be All Men Are Jerks, but that’s kind of where I am these days. Mr T asked what I thought about the Cornell Rapists – their names are Matthew Ingalls, Johnathan Newell, Winston Lee, Gillio Lopes, Diego Sarabia, Scott Norris, and Scott Kretzschmar just in case you need to look for more information – and I just sighed and said Yeah this shit happens all the time.

So when I read a this wedding story, I was just not in the mood.

Everything the groom says about the bride – about why he loves her – seems to be about how she is all about him. I don’t see anything about her that is not about him.

(Disclaimer! I am sure there is more to their story and it’s just not covered here. Maybe it’s the reporting? I am intentionally not including a link to the story and am not using their names because clearly, these two love each other and I don’t want to be mean, but I am noticing this pattern. It’s a kind of a Bechdel test, isn’t it? Can a man talk about a woman in a way that doesn’t make it about him?)

And what is the groom’s favorite thing about his new bride? “She’s easy to love. She’s just someone you feel like you can open up to and release your soul into and she won’t judge. Rather, she’ll relate and understand and offer warmth. I noticed this from our first date on and it didn’t take long to watch it evolve into love and knowing I wanted her by my side.”

When she talks about the things she loves about him, she notes characteristics that exist independently of her relationship to him. She likes how he is with other people. She likes his goals. She likes his personality.

She was drawn to his interest in human emotions. “I thought it was so sweet that he wanted to share the stories of how people fall in love and what they love about each other,” she said. “It’s a fun, positive, joyful thing he’s contributing to the world.”

When asked, “What’s your favorite thing about your partner,” she said, “He loves connecting with others. He always wants to know about other people and is so curious, talking to anyone. He’s driven and fearless and has the confidence to try anything and not be afraid to fail.”

She likes him.

He likes how he feels when she is there to absorb him. I guess that’s legitimate, but that’s also what you can get from a prostitute.

And although he doesn’t use these words so I don’t want to put them in his mouth, I am going to suggest that he might define someone having a “sense of humor” as that person thinking he is funny as opposed to that person being funny. That is, she has a sense of humor because she laughs at his jokes, not because she can make him laugh.

“It all just felt comfortable, and it made me feel like the best version of myself right off the bat,” he added. “She also laughed a lot at my jokes and when I had opinions on things I remember her deeply acknowledging them, thinking through them and appreciating stances I had on small life subjects.”

(At least when I changed doctors because Previous Doctor would not laugh at my jokes, I had the sense to wonder if maybe I just wasn’t funny.

Well, my dear friend asked me if maybe I just wasn’t funny. Then I wondered about it.)

I’m crabby and this story did not help.

Childcare as infrastructure is actually a thing

Did you know that the United States federal government has subsidized child care before? Not just with covid. But in World War 2?

Wait what?

Why?

Sometimes We’re Ivy, and Sometimes We’re Oak

Is it true that the English government is calling on women to do work abandoned by men?

Yes, it is true.

Is not woman’s place the home?

No, not when men need her services outside the home.

Will she never be told again that her place is the home?

Oh, yes, indeed.

When?

As soon as men want their jobs back again.

From “Are Women People?” by Alice Duer Miller

Because they realized that women could not work in the factories if there was nobody to watch their children.

Oh sure women were finding their own child care solutions: They locked their children in cars or chained them to trailers while they were at work.

These were not new solutions. The women who founded Hull House in Chicago thought they would be teaching art to the immigrant families in the neighborhood, but it turned out that what people really needed was child care so they wouldn’t have to tie their children to the beds to keep them from getting into the fire while the parents were at work.

(You couldn’t let the fire go out because it was too hard to get it started again.)

Anyhow, the feds realized that if they wanted people to staff the munitions factories, they needed to find a way to take care of those people’s children.

So they used the Lanham Act and this funding came to be:

Initially, grants issued by the FWA were intended to cover 50 percent of costs, with the local community picking up the rest of the tab. In practice, however, federal subsidies ended up covering closer to two-thirds of the costs. Local funds largely consisted of fees raised from participating parents. The FWA capped such fees at 50 cents per child per day (equivalent to about $9 today), raising the cap to 75 cents in 1945 (about $13 in today’s dollars)

Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond

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Can you imagine paying only $13 a day for childcare?

Almost every single one of my friends with grandchildren spends time babysitting the kids. One friend drives 100 miles north to her daughter’s house once a week to babysit. My cousin is setting up her workplace – she owns the business – so her son and daughter in law have a place for the baby they are expecting.

Child care was a major issue in the primary race we just had in my district. Both candidates talked about fixing child care. Even the candidate who makes $224k a year said it is an issue, although I don’t know if he said that just because he thought he should say it or if it truly is an issue for him and his wife. I guess there can be two parts to childcare challenges: how much it costs and then if it’s even available when price is no object.

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One of my maga cousins used to be on his town’s school board. He rolled his eyes when he told me how many parents wanted all-day kindergarten.

“They just want free child care,” he said.

Which – yes? And?

When you live in a small town and both parents have to work jobs that don’t pay very much, you don’t want to spend $300 a week on childcare.

When I suggested to another relative that we treat childcare as legitimate infrastructure, she scoffed and said she didn’t want to pay for day care for other people’s kids.

I pointed out that she pays for highways and the fire department and the police department, even though she doesn’t necessarily use them.

She was unswayed.

But when I told her the all-day kindergarten story, she asked indignantly how parents are supposed to get their children at 11:35 a.m., noting how difficult it had been when her kids were that age.

She is so, so close.

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By the way, when I was a kid, there were day-care centers on base. The military provided day care because they knew it was essential to the mission. They still provide day care – subsidized – because it is essential to the mission.

Women

(With rather insincere apologies to Mr. Rudyard Kipling.)

I went to ask my government if they would set me free,

They gave a pardoned crook a vote, but hadn’t one for me;

The men about me laughed and frowned and said: “Go home, because

We really can’t be bothered when we’re busy making laws.”

Oh, it’s women this, and women that and women have no sense,

But it’s pay your taxes promptly when it comes to the expense,

It comes to the expense, my dears, it comes to the expense,

It’s pay your taxes promptly when it comes to the expense.

I went into a factory to earn my daily bread:

Men said: “The home is woman’s sphere.” “I have no home,” I said.

But when the men all marched to war, they cried to wife and maid,

“Oh, never mind about the home, but save the export trade.”

For it’s women this and women that, and home’s the place for you,

But it’s patriotic angels when there’s outside work to do,

There’s outside work to do, my dears, there’s outside work to do,

It’s patriotic angels when there’s outside work to do.

We are not really senseless, and we are not angels, too,

But very human beings, human just as much as you.

It’s hard upon occasions to be forceful and sublime

When you’re treated as incompetents three-quarters of the time.

But it’s women this and women that, and woman’s like a hen,

But it’s do the country’s work alone, when war takes off the men,

And it’s women this and women that and everything you please,

But woman is observant, and be sure that woman sees

From “Are Women People?” by Alice Duer Miller

If only women would do something noteworthy

I was shocked yesterday when I read something about a public school being renamed for a woman (a woman I had never heard of and now I cannot find the original story).

I wasn’t shocked that the school was being renamed.

I was not shocked when I realized that none of the schools in my town are named after women. Or that none of the schools where I went to high school were named after women.

I was shocked that I had never even noticed.

When I talk about this is the water we swim in, this is what I mean.

This sort of systemic sexism is so pervasive and so ordinary that we – that I, at least – don’t even notice.

I didn’t even notice.

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I would not be shocked if I ever brought up the issue to anyone else to get the response, “Our elementary schools are named for presidents and there has never been a woman president so what are we supposed to do?”

(If only there were something we could do.)

The junior high schools are named after poets.

Male poets.

There have been female poets. I am sure of it.

(The high schools are named after the city, so that’s not an issue.)

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I was also shocked that I was shocked about the alleged proposal to rename an airport in Tennessee after Dolly Parton. Apparently, this would be the first instance in the United States of an airport being named after a woman.

I had never even noticed that there are no airports named after a woman.

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In San Antonio, where I went to high school, there is now a Sotomayor High School. That’s progress.

And I guess it’s also progress that Robert E. Lee High School has been renamed to Lee High School, although that is not very much progress.

(I did see that the school board had noted that using “Lee” as an acronym would reduce some of the costs of the name change, which, to their credit, was initiated by students in 2018.)

The previous team name was The Rebels, with the associated image below. Now it’s The Volunteers and the image is of a service dog.

Some people – in the alumni facebook group – are still angry that the name was changed. (Some of them are also remembering, apparently fondly, the teacher who used to beat them with a paddle.)(I have a pretty good idea of how these people vote.)

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I need to stop being shocked that I am shocked and start looking at everything. Everything.

Stop asking for permission

My sweet 17-year-old friend Paloma and another girl stopped by my front yard and asked about my flowers. As I went on and on and on about the value of native plants and of pollinators and the dangers of invasive species, the other girl, Paloma’s friend Trinity, lifted her right hand.

I stopped talking, looked at her, and raised my eyebrows.

She said nothing.

I returned to the fascinating topic of native plants and prairie restoration.

Her hand remained lifted.

I finally asked, “Are you – raising your hand?”

She looked at her hand in surprise. “Yes,” she answered. “I have this habit.”

“Go ahead,” I told her.

She pointed to the “No Kings, No ICE” sign in my front window.

“Are you – are you against trump?” she asked.

Paloma burst into laughter.

I laughed.

“My entire mission in life right now is to make sure no Republican, including trump, is ever elected again,” I said.

She exhaled. “Good. We can be friends.”

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I was delighted to meet such a discerning girl.

And I was even more delighted to learn that she and Paloma have learned a lot of about politics and current events at school.

(I was not taught about current events, even though when I took high school history, I was living in the Panama Canal Zone – the United States was in the process of handing control of the Zone back to the Panamanians and we had bomb threats and strikes all the time. Also when I was taking my high school history class, the archbishop was assassinated in Costa Rica, the Maryknoll nuns were murdered in El Salvador, and Jim Jones murdered his followers in Guyana.

We did not talk about any of that in school. Not in my history class, not in my Spanish class, not anywhere.)

I was not delighted that girls are still asking for permission to speak – that girls are still asking for space.

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Ten years ago, I had a wonderful co-worker, Sage. In her mid-30s, she taught me so much. She didn’t wear makeup. To work! She didn’t even wear makeup to work! Her husband was the stay at home parent, but the school never called him first, even though he was listed as the primary contact. She would seethe when they called her first and I realized she was correct.

And she refused to raise her hand in meetings.

The women’s group from my office – there were only a handful of us – were in a meeting with a (it almost goes unsaid but a male) VP from the home office.

I raised my hand to ask a question.

I didn’t even think about it.

That’s how you ask permission, right? Permission to speak? When you’re in a group? When a man is running things?

But when Sage wanted to say something, she just said it.

After the meeting, I asked her about it.

“I don’t raise my hand,” she said flatly. “We’re not children.”

He had more money. She had more determination.

I knocked on almost 1,800 doors.

I wore holes in my shoes.

She won by 291 votes out of about 10,000.

It was worth it.

The Internalized Misogyny of Some Women

Remember Susan and Chad? The people who are running in a primary against each other?

I have talked to a lot of voters about them.

Some of the people voting for Chad give me their reasons. A few reasons I can understand, even though I don’t agree with them. Reasons like “I want someone from this neighborhood” or “I’m a lawyer and I like that he’s a lawyer.”

Reasons the other volunteers and I have heard that are just batshit insane?

“He has more leadership ability,” from an 80 year old woman.

No. He doesn’t. He has literally done nothing for the community that involves working with a group and convincing people in that group to do whatever. He has done nothing professionally that involves working with a group and convincing people to do something. Although his educational background is impressive, his work background is sparse and appears to have been solo work. His volunteer background, as far as I can tell, is picking up trash for a photo op and summer volunteer things in high school that his parents would have paid for because no 15 year old has the money to fly to the Dominican Republic or wherever.

He does not have more leadership ability.

He has a penis, which many people confuse with leadership ability.

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He has more community involvement, another woman said.

No. He has picked up trash for a photo op.

Susan was the president of her college alumni board. She is a member of one of her town’s commissions. (I have served on two town commissions and it’s a pain in the neck but it’s important.) She volunteers with her church’s and her professional organization’s leadership groups. She talked to a friend of mine yesterday – a friend who works for a nonprofit helping victims of human trafficking – and it turns out Susan served on a board with the founder of my friend’s nonprofit.

Mr T was canvassing for our current representative, who has had the office for four terms. He met a college student who remembers when Current Rep was her second-grade soccer coach.

That, my friends, is deep community involvement.

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An older woman got annoyed when a volunteer leaned into the “We want more women in office” aspect.

“What rights don’t women have that men have?” she asked.

Oh honey.

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A neighbor said, “He has chutzpah.”

I agreed – until I realized she meant it as a compliment.

Nobody would say a woman has chutzpah as a compliment.

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Another neighbor likes his ambition. To be fair, she would also probably like it if a female candidate were ambitious, but this neighbor is probably not typical in being an equal-opportunity ambition admirer. Women are not usually praised for their ambition.

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He went to Harvard!

Some people just swoon about that part. He went to Harvard!

And? I don’t even know where my legislators went to college and I don’t care. What I care about is what they have accomplished since then.

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An 86 year old woman asked my friend what my friend thought about a woman maybe becoming governor of Wisconsin. My friend loves the idea.

The 86 year old woman snorted and said, “A woman for governor? That’s crazy.”

My friend snapped, “Get with it, Mabel. Women are always smarter than men.”

They don’t even want us to be ourselves in art

I was excited to see Debra Fabian’s gorgeous statue of Betsy Thunder of the Ho-Chunk Nation. Betsy was born near Black River Falls, Wisconsin, in the 1850s and was widely known throughout the region as a skilled and knowledgeable medicine woman, providing care to both Ho-Chunk and white patients.

(I didn’t even know about Betsy Thunder – I was excited when I saw the photo, even before I read about the subject.)

Why was I so excited?

Do you remember this?

I don’t remember it. It was from 1989 and I was not paying attention. But when I saw it a few years ago, I thought WHEW AT LEAST THAT CRAP IS OVER WITH.

I was wrong.

That crap is not over with.

Even today in the Year of Our Lord 2026, statues of real women – as opposed to statues of figures of women representing something else, like the Statue of Liberty, are rare.

There are around 300 statues honoring real women in the U.S. compared to around 5,000 statues honoring real men in the U.S. Only 6% of American monuments feature real women as their subjects.

UW – LaCrosse

And statues of women who are not nude are also rare.

A statue of Mary Wollstonecraft was installed in London a few years ago.

A statue of a nude Mary Wollstonecraft.

The artist, a woman, explained her thinking. (And appalled all of us, I suspect.)

Hambling, for her part, tells the Evening Standard’s Robert Dex that the nude figure is not meant to depict Wollstonecraft, but women of all eras.

“She’s [an] everywoman and clothes would have restricted her,” the artist says. “Statues in historic costume look like they belong to history because of their clothes.”

Regarding the slim, muscular body of the woman depicted in the statue, Hambling says, “As far as I know, she’s more or less the shape we’d all like to be.”

Smithsonian magazine

Right. That’s why statues of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt and every other man in the world are nude and aspirational.

Because the only thing we women can aspire to is the shape the Beauty Industrial Complex things we should have.

We can’t aspire to accomplish amazing things, like define feminism or heal people or help women get the right to vote. We can aspire to thinness.

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But again that was a few years ago and surely things have changed oh wait here’s what Debra Fabian had to say about her piece:

There was pressure on me to make Betsy a sexualized version of herself with cleavage, tight clothing and a smile. I pushed against this and am glad I did.