It’s easier for the Patriarchy if we smile. A lot of us are done with that.

How angry are women now?

How angry are our mothers and our foremothers?

How angry were they when we were kids?

Did you see you mom’s generation express that anger?

I didn’t.

I didn’t see women my mom’s age get mad.

I didn’t see them rail about injustice or how women were treated.

Yes, I saw anger at ordinary things but I did not see older women expressing anger at the system.

I didn’t know that expressing anger was an option.

Even worse, I really didn’t know that the system was wrong.

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How angry was I the first time I heard Alanis sing that song?

I wasn’t angry but I was puzzled about sexual harassment at work. Why would my boss ask me what I had done to get a married man my dad’s age (OLD) to kiss me? Why would a customer laugh when I told him not to grab my butt?

I wasn’t angry but I was frustrated about why I couldn’t get promoted. What was I doing wrong?

I wasn’t angry about women not being able to get credit cards in their own name until the late 70s because I didn’t even know about it.

I wasn’t angry about the lack of abortion rights because we still had them.

I wasn’t angry that before Roe, white girls and women had their babies ripped from their arms while “‘naturally’ sexually promiscuous and ‘naturally’ maternal” Black girls and women were expected to keep their babies because I didn’t know. (Source)

I wasn’t angry but I was confused when a male hiring manager asked me how my parents felt about my having a career. Did he ask that question of everyone, I wondered. And why did he even want to know? Was living at home with your parents after you graduated from college even an option?

I wasn’t angry when the woman was assaulted running through Central Park at night. Who runs alone at night?

Wait. What *woman* runs alone at night?

I wasn’t angry that of course *I* would never go running by myself after dark. That I would always park under the streetlight if I went to the store at night. That I would never meet a blind date or a guy from a dating site except at a public place.

I wasn’t angry because I hadn’t thought about any of this.

It was just how the world worked. Nothing to be done except change my behavior and try not to cause men to treat me in ways I didn’t want to be treated.

I didn’t think I was angry but I did know that I had never heard a song like that before.

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It wasn’t until my then-boyfriend asked me why the song was so popular that I realized that it was the first time I had heard a song about women’s rage. He didn’t like that she was so furious.

Reader, I broke up with him.

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My mom was her class valedictorian. She went to college on a full scholarship but dropped out after her freshman year to get married.

My mom is brilliant. She is super smart and organized and she gets shit done.

Her skills were used to support my dad’s dreams.

I don’t even know what my mom’s dreams were.

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Now that I know things, I am angry.

I watched and experienced more years of sexual harassment that male bosses dismissed.

More years of watching men who had not accomplished as much as I had getting the promotions I did not get.

More years of asking my boss what I had to do to get promoted but never getting an answer.

More years of watching the men hired to replace me be paid 34% more than I was paid. (And then they didn’t accomplish anything.)

More years of watching women criticized for things men are praised for. Of men being direct; women talk too much. Men are smart; women use Big Words Nobody Can Understand.

Of hearing a friend tell me that when she told her priest about her first husband beating her, the priest’s attitude was Well yes but you’re married and divorce is not an option.

Of my friend Heather snapping at me that the woman should have been able to run through Central Park at night.

Of women being attacked with sexist terms instead on substance.

Of seeing how we have f*ing chewable viagra but still don’t have a clue about how to cure endometriosis.

Of seeing the disparities in white and Black maternal mortality rates.

Now I am angry about everything.

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Does my mother’s generation even know they’re angry?

They must have a substrate of simmering rage about opportunities missed and life in general that they never thought they could express and probably, even if asked today, could not articulate.

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My friend Judith’s mother is jealous of her and does show anger to Judith.

Not because Judith has done anything wrong but because Judith has had and has taken advantage of the opportunities that she has had and that her mother, growing up in post-war Germany, never had.

Judith’s mom is angry with the wrong target.

It’s not Judith’s fault that the system stinks. Judith did not create the patriarchy or sexism or misogyny.

Judith’s mom needs to direct her fury to the system.

We all do.

We need to use our rage to smash the patriarchy and change these systems so our daughters and granddaughters never have to be angry about these issues again.

When women have power, they use it to protect women and girls (except for Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who is disgusting for signing that child labor bill into law)

My cousin – a trumper – asked if the only reason I support Kamala is because she’s a woman.

He has lived in the same small (two stoplights) town his entire life.

Ten years ago, we were talking about gay marriage. He was against it. (To be fair, I used to be against it until I really thought about it. People can change and grow.)

I asked him what about his gay friends – shouldn’t they be able to marry?

“I don’t have any gay friends,” he answered.

I laughed and said “Oh yes you do.”

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Sometimes, people can’t think of anything beyond their own experience.

Sometimes, those people are straight white men who are not necessarily interested in anything beyond their own experience and what benefits them.

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My friend Lenore and I toured Villa Louis, a historical site in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. One of the residents of the house was Jane Fisher Rolette Dousman. In 1818, she married Joseph Rolette.

She was 14.

He was 37.

She was his second wife.

Joseph’s first wife, Marguerite Dubois, whom he married when he was 26, was also 14 when he married her.

Marguerite died in 1817 at age 24, leaving two children.

And yes, 1817 – the year of Marguerite’s death – is only one tiny year before he married Jane.

In case you were wondering, women did not yet have the vote when these child marriages happened.

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A few years ago, Mr T was running for public office.

Another Democrat entered the primary to challenge him.

When we found out her platform was human trafficking and maternal mortality, we were confused.

Were these even issues in our middle-class neighborhood?

Holy smoke yes they were and are.

The challenger, whom Mr T supported wholeheartedly after he withdrew from the primary (“How do I run against someone I agree with?” he asked), is a woman. A mother. A photographer.

And she had noticed – when she was photographing weddings – grown men taking very young women up to their hotel rooms.

She heard from her friends about maternal mortality, including the disparities in maternal mortality rates between white women and Black women.

And she knew that women’s health conditions do not get the same level of research and even respect (doctors tend to provide painkillers for men and therapy for women) that men’s health conditions do.

She knew these things from her own lived experience.

Mr T is a wonderful, caring, compassionate man, but it had never occurred to him that these were issues that needed attention. Because they did not touch his world.

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That’s not to say that men are incapable of making laws and policy that help women and children. Governor Tim Walz is the guy who got free lunch for Minnesota schoolchildren. And who put free menstrual supplies in public schools.

But – would he have done these things if he hadn’t seen the need with his own eyes when he was a teacher?

Maybe.

He does have a wife and daughter, too, but man it sure helps to live these experiences. (The former student who introduced Walz at the DNC explained that Walz was his junior high track coach because he – Walz – looked for extra jobs so he could pay for lunch for his students who couldn’t afford it.)

---

And I know Mr T, had he been elected and had I asked, would have supported legislation and policy to improve women’s health.

But here’s the thing – until Mr T’s challenger brought up maternal mortality as a campaign issue, it never even occurred to me that women’s health – outside of abortion and abortion was safe, right? – could even be a political issue. That it could be a problem we could solve via legislation.

---

The Wisconsin abortion law was passed in 1849.

That was before women could vote.

As in – women would not have voted for that crap.

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Women did what they could before the government recognized our right to be part of choosing our government.

Part of the women’s suffrage movement in England was about age of consent and prostitution and other child welfare issues. Women wanted the vote so they could effect change on these issues, but they didn’t let not being able to vote stop them.

In the later 1860s a series of Contagious Diseases Acts attempted to control sexually transmitted diseases in the armed services by eliminating prostitution in garrison towns and ports. The Acts were the result of campaigns by various groups concerned with public health.

However, a strong protest movement grew up – the Ladies’ National Association led by the social reformer Josephine Butler – which argued that it was the men who frequented prostitutes who needed to be punished. The Acts were eventually suspended in 1883, and repealed in 1886.

Young girls in London

For several decades the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children had been concerned by the sexual exploitation of young girls in London. A press campaign on the subject in 1885 had persuaded Parliament to pass the Criminal Law Amendment Act.

As well as raising the female age of consent from 13 to 16, the Act set down a series of other regulations for the protection of young women from vice. The new legislation proved a great success, with a huge increase in the number cases being reported to the police and brought before the courts.

Parliament.uk

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In the US, women advocated for families as well. The Temperance Movement was not a bunch of women crabby that their husbands went out for a beer after work.

It was women who watched their children cry with hunger because not only were their husbands drinking their entire paychecks, the husbands never even got the paychecks. The taverns and employers worked together so employers would garnish employee wages to pay their bar tabs. That money never even hit the men’s pockets and never made it into their homes. The wives never even saw the money.

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It wasn’t until women had the vote and had some representation in office that it finally became illegal to deny women their own credit cards and loans.

That was in 1974, y’all.

And it was a woman who introduced the bill.

Although the Equal Pay Act was passed in 1963 requiring men and women to be paid equally when doing the same work (HAHAHAHA!), it wasn’t until the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) was passed in 1974 that women were able to get their own credit cards in their own name. The ECOA was originally introduced in 1973 by Representative Bella Abzug (D-NY) and was signed into law by President Gerald Ford on October 28, 1974.

Forbes

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I love Kamala’s vision for our country. I want a new voting rights act signed. I want families to be able to afford to raise children. I do not want Project 2025 (that alone is enough for me to not want the other guy).

I want Kamala to win for many reasons.

Her being a woman is not the only reason I support her.

But it’s definitely A Reason.

I first published this piece in 2020 but it also applies now, too. VOTE!!! (And write postcards – they work.)

Will you shut up, man?

I don’t even know where to start.

I am done, done, done with these jerks who try to talk over us and who accuse us (women in general, not me, because I am not successful) of having professional success only because we slept with the right person.

A young man at the place I volunteer told me a few weeks ago that Kamala had clearly slept her way to the top.

I replied, “Disagree with her on policy and her record – that’s fine. But that’s bullshit that she slept her way to her success. Honestly, if it were that easy for women to sleep our way to power, don’t you think we would all be doing it?”

Another volunteer, who is another Woman of a Certain Age, chimed in. “I know I would have,” she said. “If I could be rich just by sleeping with someone? I would do it.”

A member of the Wisconsin Republican party, which has time on their hands because it’s not like the Wisconsin legislature has met in the past six months or anything, tweeted this:

“If there are any questions on how to sleep your way to the top, Kamala will have an advantage,” Best wrote. His post included a meme that said, “She will be an inspiration to young girls by showing that if you sleep with the right powerfully connected men then you too can play second fiddle to a man with dementia. It’s basically a Cinderella story.”

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

1. Cinderella did not sleep her way to the top. She made an awesome dress with the help of some cute rodents. I don’t think she and the prince even kiss.
2. Let’s say Kamala (I know I should say “Harris” but Kamala is such a great name) did sleep her way to the top. I want to learn from her. Show me how to sleep with the right powerfully connected men so that I, too, can win court cases and be elected with (consults wikipedia) 3,000,689 votes.

Of course, I am assuming that everyone she slept with voted for her.

But what if she also slept with people who didn’t vote for her?

Because there were 1,416,203 votes cast for her opponent.

What if she slept with all the voters but not all of them voted for her?

How much time would it take to sleep with (3,000,689+1,416,203) = 4,416,892 people?

Leaving out the logistics of travel, etc, let’s assume 30 minutes per encounter.

That’s 2,208,446 hours, which is 92,018 days, which is 252 years.

252 years of sleeping with people to get their votes.

(That doesn’t even include the jurors on all of her trials.)

But my math might be wrong. My assumption of 30 minutes per encounter might be wrong. Please feel free to correct me.

Still, she would have been busy.

Which is why she doesn’t have time to let anyone talk over her.

Which is why hearing the VP trying to shut her up and hearing her response to him inspired joy in the heart of every single woman who has ever been in a meeting with men and wanted to shout, “WOULD YOU PLEASE JUST SHUT UP I AM TALKING IT’S MY TURN.”

We are so tired of being talked over. We are so tired of men interrupting us and not hearing us and saying what we just said and getting credit for it even though we are the ones who said it. We are so tired of being condescended to and being explained to.

We are tired.

And we loved it when Kamala told Pence “I’m speaking.”

Even though he knew she was speaking.

He knew and he spoke over her anyhow.

But she did not take his crap. She told him to shut up shut up shut up.

She did it more nicely than that, but that’s what she meant.

And even with that, she had to be careful.

Because heaven forbid she speak too loudly. Or too womanly. Or too meanly.

Because no matter what she does, she is going to be judged.

By jerks, I might add, but it must get tiring to be criticized all the time for doing normal things like frowning and talking and raising your voice because we all know that sometimes the only way to get men to listen is to scream and they don’t like it and ask why you don’t just ask in a normal tone of voice which is when you tell them that you did but they ignored you.

It fell to Harris to remind the vice president, “I’m speaking” — something he already knew but chose to ignore. If Harris had raised her voice in those moments, she would have been labeled shrill. If she had frowned, she would have been labeled a scold. If she had raised a hand, she would have been called angry or even unhinged.

Washington Post

Which is a whole other thing – having to scream to be heard and then being chastised for not speaking softly. Which you did do. You did speak softly. You knelt at a football game.

That didn’t work.

So now people are screaming.

Why should anyone be surprised?

VOTEVOTEVOTEVOTEVOTE

(I want to be as nasty as Kamala Harris.)

I first published this piece in 2020 but it applies now, too. VOTE!!! (And write postcards – they work.)

Also if sleeping your way to the top is possible how can I do it because I am tired of being at the bottom

And it starts. The sexist attacks on Kamala Harris.

Are we surprised?

No. No we are not.

This is the way it goes – the way insecure, pathetic, weak men discredit women and yes, I am talking to you, Mr President, who has very very small hands that his own wife doesn’t even want to hold, and you, Rush Limbaugh, who called Harris a “hoe,” and any man who thinks that the fact that he has a penis makes him superior to a woman and makes him fit to run the world.

We are shrill. We are emotional. (Because anger is not an emotion so therefore men do not get emotional.) We have hormones and you know what that means.

And we use sex to get what we want.

(How does that even work? How does a person – a woman – even use sex to get ahead at work? Do you write a contract? How does the quid pro quo get established? Do you discuss the terms before the sex? Or is it just understood? Why isn’t there a handbook for this? Why have I done my whole life wrong? WHY WASN’T THERE A CLASS ON THIS AT BUSINESS SCHOOL? UT-AUSTIN YOU FAILED ME.)

A person I used to respect sent me a link to a story from January 2019 claiming that Harris had “slept her way to the top.” This was his triumphant proof that Harris is not qualified to be vice president.

I will save you the trouble of reading it. It says that Harris dated Willie Brown, who was the mayor of San Francisco, for a short while, when she was in her late 20s. He appointed her to two state commissions.

This is “sleeping your way to the top.”

My acquaintance thinks Trump is the epitome of brilliance and accomplishment and that Harris, who got into and graduated from Howard and got into and graduated from Hastings and was elected San Francisco DA and was elected California AG (twice) and was elected California senator and won huge court cases as a prosecutor, is the person who has done nothing on her own merits.

How many people did she have to sleep with to accomplish all that LORD HAVE MERCY SHE MUST BE EXHAUSTED.

So Trump, who didn’t take his own SATs, whose admission to Penn was facilitated by personal connections and a bribe, who inherited his money and has never accomplished anything on his own except drive businesses and an entire country into the ground, is the standard by which we should measure success?

But Harris, who has a resume that is so bright I need to wear sunglasses to look at it, is the loser who parlayed a few dates with Willie Brown into membership on two state commissions into a brilliant career but IT’S ALL BECAUSE SHE SLEPT WITH WILLIE BROWN?

She must be amazing in bed is all I have to say./sarcasm

Also – I have been on a city commission and I was just appointed to another one. Trust me when I say commissions are not the route to power. You serve on a city commission because you care deeply about the issue, not because you value your free time, not because you enjoy sitting in a windowless room until 11 p.m. on a work night listening to citizens testify in two-minute increments about a deeply controversial issue as they glare at you and imply that you are in favor of disemboweling kittens and puppies when the real situation is that the city just doesn’t have $15 million in spare cash lying around and you personally also do not have that in your checking account.

Commissions are work. That is all. They do not benefit the members personally. We do it as a labor of love because we care about our communities.

So.

1. Sex is currency that can result in career advancement
2. There must be rules somewhere
3. That I have never known about
4. Commissions are a pain in the ass

Which means that the commissions are a smokescreen and it was all the sex Harris must have had with Brown only he didn’t control the juries or the voters and I AM SO CONFUSED.

But the real takeaway is that very powerful men are scared of Harris and that? Is a very good thing.

Rock on Kamala. We are with you.

Part II: In which I do the math about Kamala and everyone she had to sleep with 

We can convince them! But we have to talk to them

Maybe we can win this.

Maybe if we all do just a little bit of work – even if you have never volunteered on a campaign before – we can win this.

Maybe if we all talk to a few people every day or every week – the woman walking her dog while you’re working in your front flowerbeds, the woman waiting next to you for a haircut, the woman in the long line for the ladies’ at a concert – we can win this.

And I left this part out at first because it didn’t hit me until the middle of the night to give you a script! I ask everyone I see (unless they’re wearing MAGA stuff) if they are registered to vote. If they’re not, I tell them to go to MyVote.WI.gov, which is the online voter registration site in Wisconsin. Your state probably has something like it. Memorize the address, memorize the registration requirements, and tell people. You would be surprised at how many people are not registered!

I know talking about politics is hard.

It’s even harder to talk about politics to strangers.

But the worst that can happen is that someone doesn’t want to engage or that she’s rude to you and oh well.

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(You can also write postcards! You don’t have to talk to anyone.)

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Attitudes are changing. You never know.

My mother voted for trump in 2016 because of abortion but within a few years – my mom whom I had never heard talk about politics before and who doesn’t spend all day immersed online reading the news and opinion pieces (do you read Heather Cox Richardson’s daily letter? You need to.) – started talking about what a horrible man he is and how much she hates him and how he could not be elected again in 2020.

I have never in my life – EVER – before this heard her talk about a president or how she feels about him

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When I was doing doors in a working-class conservative neighborhood in the fall of 2022, I was (happily) shocked at how many older women I spoke to who told me they hated the idea of abortion and never would have wanted one for themselves, but they would be damned if they would tell another woman what to do with her body.

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The Republicans wanted to criminalize abortion and now they have it and guess what maybe conservative women want abortion available for themselves and their daughters after all.

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I have been talking to almost everyone I meet about the Wisconsin election on August 13. These are not conversations about Kamala but about some (very bad) proposed amendments to the Wisconsin Constitution.

But yesterday, at the Wisconsin State Fair, when I asked a woman working at a history booth if she knew about the election, we got into a larger political discussion.

Woman at State Fair: This is the first time I will ever vote for a Democrat.

Me: Do you mind telling me what changed your mind?

Woman: He’s an asshole! And I care about our democracy. I watched January 6th and I was horrified. I realized I couldn’t be a single-issue voter anymore.

Me: Was abortion your issue?

Woman: Yes but even that troubles me now. I want autonomy over my own body. Guns are the other thing. We watched 20 children get slaughtered at Sandy Hook and wouldn’t do anything about guns? What kind of country are we? And his attitude toward women! I have too much respect for myself as a woman to vote for him again. I would vote for Mickey Mouse against him. Anyone but him.

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My friends.

These are the issues that I think can convince conservative women to vote for Kamala:

• Bodily autonomy for them and their daughters and granddaughters
• Their children’s safety

Talk to the women around you about who gets to make decisions about our bodies.

Talk to them about fearing for our children’s and our grandchildren’s lives.

And when they say things in reference to bodily autonomy like they don’t want to be told they have to put a vaccine in their body, either – as the woman at the fair did – just smile and nod because vaccines not what we are talking about. We’re talking about democracy and women’s rights and children’s safety and an anti-vaxxer vote for Kamala is still a vote for Kamala.

WE HAVE THICK SKIN WE CAN DO THIS IN DEFENSE OF DEMOCRACY.