Texan who was tricked by Used Husband into moving to Milwaukee. Fomenting feminist revolution based on potty parity, pockets, and psleeves. Bad bacon eater. Also, cats. Also, REVOLUTION.
When I was canvassing for Kamala and then for Susan Crawford (for Wisconsin Supreme Court), I would talk to the people on my MiniVAN list (this is a list the campaign manager gives you — it’s based on various publicly-available criteria, such as whether someone is registered to vote, has donated to a campaign or group, leans left or right, and/or voted in the past election), but I would also talk to almost anyone I saw sitting on a porch or working in the yard.
Of those porch/yard people, I encountered several folks who told me they were not registered to vote.
When I tried to tell them how to register, they told me they didn’t want to vote. That they never had voted.
They just – didn’t vote.
I couldn’t understand it. How could anyone be so disengaged from the political process? One of these people is 76 years old – old enough to have seen things and to know what’s going on. Also, incidentally, someone who had polio as a child and whose left arm has been crippled since then. And who is not rich at all – who lives on Social Security. This is someone who is deeply affected by what happens in DC.
These people live in different neighborhoods. Range in age from late 20s to mid 70s. All middle or working class – nobody rich.
The one thing they have in common?
They are all white men.
Why on earth would these men not vote? Why would they not care about voting?
It took me months to figure it out.
It’s because they don’t need to.
They don’t need to vote.
No matter who’s in office, the system works for them.
They don’t care about abortion.
They don’t care that the police are twice as likely to shoot a Black person than a white one.
They don’t care that maternal mortality for Black women is three to four times higher than it is for white women.
They don’t care that in the richest country in the world, children are losing their Medicaid and food stamps.
They don’t care that undocumented people are being put into concentration camps.
They don’t care about any of these because none of it affects them personally.
No matter what, their lives go on. They still have perceived authority because of the color of their skin and what’s in their pants. They still get Viagra and they still get research to make Viagra even better. They’re not questioned. The police don’t follow them. Their lives are fine.
So why on earth should they care about anyone else?
When I lived in Chile and my roommate and I had parties, we would just tell guests we were going to bed and to lock the door behind them when they left, but that practice does not seem to transfer to the US.
What do you do when you invite someone to supper – someone you have not seen in a long time and is only a casual friend (but is nonetheless, a kind, warm person) – and it’s 10 p.m. and he still won’t go home?
Mr T and I had a houseguest, HG. HG and Mr T have a mutual friend from their old job who lives near here. They asked Mutual Friend (MF) to dinner.
A couple of years before covid, MF moved back to town to care for his aging parents. We would see him about once a year or so. He always showed up with nice cheese and a bottle of wine. He was pleasant company.
(MF also, it turns out, despite being a well-educated, intelligent person, has turned into an anti-vaxxer trumper end times conspiracy theorist. But I didn’t learn that until after this most recent visit.)
(We will not be inviting him back.)
We ate and then I announced I was going into the bedroom to read and the three of them could carry on.
Three hours later, HG announced that he was going upstairs to call his wife. He said goodbye to MF.
Twenty minutes later, HG came back downstairs.
MF was still there.
“How long are you guys staying up?” he asked.
Mr T came into the bedroom, closed the door, and whispered to me, “He won’t go home! How do we make him go home?”
I said, “Just tell him you have an early morning and it’s been nice to see him.”
Mr T answered, “I can’t do that! He knows both HG and I never get up early!”
Do I have to do everything myself?
(At least I knew I could get MF out of the house. When Mr T’s parents stayed at our house for nine days nine whole days nine miserable days for our wedding, Mr T’s mom fell down the stairs and I thought HOLY SHIT SHE’S BROKEN SOMETHING THEY WILL NEVER LEAVE.)
I sighed.
Put my book down on the bed.
Got up.
Put on my slippers.
Walked out to the dining room where HG stood helplessly.
Walked up to MF, smiled, put my arm around his waist, started walking him to the door, and said, “MF it’s been so good to see you again! I’m afraid I have to kick you out, though. I need to get to sleep and y’all are too noisy for me. Thank you so much for coming!”
Dear Miss Manners: How do I politely and firmly convey to an interested party that I merely want to discuss business, and am not interested in meeting for coffee or any other alone time that could be construed as romantic?
I feel that an abrupt “I do not drink coffee, but I will see you at the next official function” would not sufficiently discourage the interested party from inquiring further.
And that the commenters who dismissed the letter writer’s concerns are (probably) men.
“LW2 getting coffee is not romantic alone time, it’s an opportunity to build a business relationship.”
“Really? This seems unduly rigid. There is nothing wrong with getting to know a colleague better. If someone is hitting on the LW, it’s better handled in a coffee shop than by shutting down all platonic outreach completely. Not everyone has a bad motive.”
“People are assuming inappropriate intentions around this coffee. If someone wants to meet professionally to talk about business but in a coffee shop, or even if they want to get to know a colleague better in lieu of a water cooler, these are not monumental requests. Responding coldly as if LW can NOT be bothered to have a single informal conversation and no interest in knowing a coworker or worse, assumes the coworker is hitting on LW, that’s so rude. Who would want to work with this person? Part of work is sharing ideas, and that happens well in informal settings. And part of working with coworkers is having positive relationships with them. Nothing about the request is unprofessional but many of these catty responses are.” – Frank
Years ago, my male and otherwise really good boss Bob got angry with me when I told the ad salesman from a trade publication that I didn’t want to have dinner with him that night after work.
Bob and I had already met for a few hours with the guy.
We had covered the business issues.
I was done.
But then the salesman asked me to dinner that evening.
I am not the most perceptive person when it comes to identifying flirting, but damn. This one was obvious. He asked female me and not my more powerful male boss?
This was not about the work.
Bob told me it was my job to do things like that.
In his mind, it was a simple dinner.
In mine, it was a huge infringement on my personal time by someone who I had already met with during working hours and with whom I had no interest at all in a romantic or any other kind of relationship.
A customer asked me to meet him for lunch. I reluctantly agreed, because I needed this guy.
But – he didn’t want to meet at the restaurant. He wanted me to meet him at his workplace (he was the produce manager at a grocery store that was letting us photograph ads there).
I met him there. He wanted to drive. I got into his car.
He turned on Kenny G.
Y’all.
This is not Professional Lunch music.
At the restaurant, while I was trying to talk about the ad campaign, he told me how lonely he was since his divorce.
He asked me how it was that I was still not married.
We all know This Guy.
Some men have blinders.
Some men really do think it is all about the coffee.
My boss Vinny thought so.
Once a week or so, a few of us would walk across the street to the coffeeshop and grab coffee. It took us maybe 20 minutes total.
I always asked Vinny if he wanted to join us.
He always said no. One day, he explained that he just didn’t like coffee.
I laughed and said, “It is not about the coffee! It’s about spending a few minutes with co-workers and developing relationships!”
I didn’t ask Vinny to coffee because I wanted him to have a cup of coffee.
I asked him to coffee to improve our work relationship.
It is never about the coffee.
The answer the Miss Manners letter writer is seeking is, “My calendar is always current. Please feel free to request a meeting with me and include an agenda so I can be prepared. We can us the meeting room on the third floor.”
The Metis Founding Mother, and Menominee “Queen” of Milwaukee
Josette Vieau (1804-1855), half French Canadian and half Menominee, married Solomon Juneau, the man who would later become Milwaukee’s founder and statesman.
Fluent in French and multiple Native languages, Josette served as her husband’s interpreter, facilitated alliances and access to tribal trade networks, ran the trading post when her husband was away, raised thirteen children, and was midwife to American newcomers.
She was praised as having a queenly presence, and widely credited as saving the settlement with bravery while her husband was out of town, averting a planned raid by the aggrieved Potawatomi tribe members against the white settlers by patrolling the streets herself all night.
By all accounts she was amiable, self-possessed, charitable and diplomatic. That plus her long marriage to Solomon Juneau earned her the name “Founding Mother of Milwaukee”. The Juneaus marriage was loving and lasted for decades. She died 1852, and Solomon died a year later, almost to the day.
When I read this post about Josette Vieau Juneau, I wrote, “So Juneau married a woman who gave him what he needed to be successful in his career. It’s a story as old as time: a man sleeping his way to the top, sometimes by marrying the boss’s daughter (looking at you, half the beer barons in Milwaukee and a senator), sometimes by marrying an entire network.”
And oh boy did I kick open a can of worms.
Well, with one guy. So maybe a worm.
The admin of the group wrote, “That’s about it, yep. Fur Traders needed Native business connections and they married into them.”
But another reader got all butthurt that I would diminish Solomon Juneau that way – by implying that he made a fortune only because he married the right woman. The idea that a woman even had anything to do with Juneau’s success was just offensive. How dare I.
He responded indignantly,
I would highly suggest you read primary sources on Juneau and Josette before Milwaukee was even considered becoming developed. Your comment about sleeping his way to the top is appalling. The Milwaukee County Historical Society has their original letters and you can still read them to this day. Based off his letters and others who wrote about their marriage, all evidence points to your theory as nothing more than a stupid fb comment.
I’ve read and handled countless letters from Juneau, Morgan Martin, and Josette. Absolutely NOTHING is true about Texan’s theory about Juneau. It’s obvious she hasn’t done her research concerning him, his relationship with Josette, and his role in Milwaukee History.
Absolutely appalling
Please note BTW that he says absolutely nothing that refutes my statement. Nothing he writes indicates that Juneau would have been successful even if he had been married to another woman.
PS I would also suggest that a marriage in the early 1800s that “lasted for decades” is not unusual, as it’s not like women were in a position to divorce easily back then. The way to leave a marriage was death.
1995 question: Ms Rodham Clinton, what do you think would have happened in your life if you hadn’t married Bill Clinton? Where would you be today?
Rodham Clinton: I’d be married to the president.
But sleeping your way to the top has long been a Wisconsin tradition.
For men.
It has long been a tradition for men.
In a new exhibit at the Milwaukee County Historical Society museum, I noticed that many of the famous beer barons became famous beer barons only after they married the daughters or widows of famous beer barons.
(Kudos to the museum for calling out these important details.)
(How much do you want to bet that the daughters could have run those breweries just fine on their own?)
(And how much do you want to bet that those daughters actually did run those breweries? But the men got the credit?)
Philip Jung, who rose to own a successful brewery, married the boss’ daughter. The historian (whom I greatly admire) who wrote the story below says Jung’s rise was not a result of nepotism, but I would have to say that Jung might not have been promoted to brewmaster in the first place if he had not been Best’s son-in-law.
Three years later, he married one of the Best daughters, Anna, but Jung’s subsequent rise was not the result of nepotism. A master of the art of beer and a tireless innovator, the young man was promoted to Best’s brewmaster in 1877 and promptly tripled the company’s output. Jung worked closely with another Best son-in-law, Frederick Pabst. That flamboyant former lake captain eventually became sole owner of the brewery and renamed it for himself in 1889.
Wisconsin’s senator Ron Johnson married into his money.
In 1979, Johnson moved to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, with his wife, Jane. He worked for his wife’s family’s plastics company, PACUR….Curler created the company with funding from his and Jane’s father, Howard Curler. Howard Curler had been named CEO of the plastics giant Bemis Company in 1978, and for the first several years of PACUR’s existence, Bemis was the company’s only customer.
According to his campaign biography, Johnson worked as PACUR’s accountant and a machine operator. In the mid-1980s…. Johnson became its CEO.
Johnson was named CEO of a company his brother-in-law owned – and for whom the only customer was the company of which his father-in-law was the CEO.
I am wondering if Ron would have risen to CEO in a company where he wasn’t related to the owner or only customer.
In my nightly call to Ron Johnson (I also call all the other WI legislators), I asked him why he was protecting a man who rapes children and then I asked him if he had ever wondered where he might be if he had worked for anyone but his wife’s family. Did he really think he would have been a CEO or accomplished anything else without working at a family business and then using family money to run for office?
I’m just asking questions here.
If you have been wondering how absolutely completely stupid and otherwise unqualified white men fall up, wonder no longer.
How do you even know if you were raped? How can we ever answer such a difficult question? And have we forgotten that we are here merely to be livestock? (Well if we’re white.)
Medusa With the Head of Perseus, Luciano Garbati.
My friend’s stepmom, Betty, is 74 years old. She helped raise my friend and her brother and they adore her.
When I asked if she had children from her own body, she said yes, she had a daughter.
“I had her when I was 14,” she told me.
I raised my eyebrows.
“I was raped.”
“I had a boyfriend who was a few years older. He took me on the rides at the fair and I was dizzy and sick and he took advantage of me. When I figured out that I was pregnant, I told him, but he said I must have been with someone else. I didn’t know what to do.”
“But then his mama found out. She loved me. And she said, ‘That’s my grandbaby.'”
“And she helped me.”
Madge, an artist, is also 74.
She was raped when she was 21.
They found the raper (I KNOW, right?) and she testified at the trial.
She thinks they picked her to testify instead of one of his other victims because she was kind of plain and not flighty. They probably weren’t going to ask the woman wearing khakis and a t-shirt what she was wearing.
(Oh wait of course they would.)
(Below are images from the What Were You Wearing? exhibit, which shows the clothes rape survivors were wearing at the time of the crime.)
The defense asked her how she knew that the rapist actually penetrated her.
(WTF. Also, as if it would be OK if he had just held her to the ground, ripped her jeans off, and put his penis next to her vulva? That would be acceptable behavior?)
Madge has never married. She has never had a serious relationship.
“I think I am like an onion and the only layer I let people see is the one on the outside,” she said.
The raper was sentenced to one day to life.
Madge has never listed her phone number under her real name.
“I don’t know if he’s still in prison,” she said. “And I never want to answer the phone and hear his voice at the other end.”
And the word “rape” is not used in any of the news stories.
Although even in Arkansas, 15 is below the age of consent.
So it was rape.
By definition, this was rape.
Second Judicial Circuit Judge Scott Ellington gave Gipson a year of probation.
And he has ordered him to take parenting classes.
Parenting classes.
Why would a rapist be ordered to take parenting classes I really want to know the answer to this question.
I knew the Republican senators from Arkansas – Tom Cotton and John Boozman – hate women. Seems like all the Republican men do.
But wouldn’t you think that Sarah Huckabee Sanders – a woman – might have something to say about girl – A GIRL – being forced to give birth to her rapist’s baby and then TO LET HIM HAVE ACCESS TO THAT BABY?
Why is this man walking anywhere outside of a prison yard?
Texan in Exile 