Tuesday, June 7, 2011

A Case Could Be Made....

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When I was a young woman, I was--for the part of the geography where I lived--relatively active in the early women's movement. Oh, I didn't burn my bras or anything--I needed them to keep the girls in check. I didn't march--I would have been all alone (not much of a parade). But I was a card-carrying member of NOW--and the only one in the county in which I lived (NOW had published membership numbers by county, so naturally, I looked for my county--membership 1.)

Then, when we thought we finally had things going in the right direction. Candidate for President Hubert Humphrey's personal physician and confidant, Dr Edgar Berman, said--right out loud and everything--"Suppose, that we had a menopausal woman President who had to make the decision of the Bay of Pigs or the Russian contretemps with Cuba at the time?" Dr. Berman argued that women are limited in their leadership potential by physiological and psychological factors, especially during the menstrual cycle and menopause. (Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,876731,00.html)

Rep Patsy Mink had about the best response. She called Berman a "bigot," guilty of "the basest sort of prejudice against women . . . His use of the menstrual cycle and menopause to ridicule women and to caricature all women as neurotic and emotionally unbalanced was as indefensible and astonishing as those who still believe, let alone dare state, that the Negro is physiologically inferior." Hey, a bigot is a bigot. You gotta' call 'em like you see 'em.

Currently, we have a fairly large crop of middle-aged men in public office going middle-aged crazy: Anthony Weiner, John Ensign, Eliot Spitzer, Mark Sanford, John Edwards, Larry Craig, etc. And that's just within the past couple of years.

Can you think of even one woman office holder who has had some sort of sexual scandal? (I don't count the current governor of Oklahoma who got caught in a compromising position with her body guard while she was still married to someone else. I just figure, she is the exception that proves the rule.)

Anyway, maybe it's the men who should be kept out of office because of their instability?

Just saying.
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