The last time I checked my credentials, I was a proud, card-carrying feminist who supported the hopes, dreams and ambitions of women everywhere yearning to be free. Show me any woman who is denied opportunity, preyed upon, demeaned or objectified and I am a frothing-at-the-mouth, pit-bull ready to attack in her defense.
However, while sisterhood is a powerful connection, it doesn't render those of us who believe in it deaf, dumb and stupid. It also doesn't provide shelter for women who once derided the very idea of feminism, but now find themselves in a pickle and are looking to it to provide a way out.
Which is why I have no problem that during the recent Republican presidential candidates debate Byron York asked Michelle Bachman what she meant when she told the Washington Post in a profile piece that she pursued her degree in tax law only because her husband had told her to quoting, "The Lord says: Be submissive wives. You are to be submissive to your husbands." Not only was it an appropriate question, any reporter who doesn't keep asking her to explain fully what she meant when she said it is derelict in their duty as a reporter.
It's one of God's cosmic jokes that the most prominent women on the political scene right now are women like Michelle Bachman, Sarah Palin, Sharron Angle and Christine O'Donnell, all of whom have made it clear they believe that the 19th Century had it just about perfect when it comes to women's rights. To them sisterhood is something you find in a convent where the ultimate husband imparts his wishes to his submissive wives.
Yet when each of them running for high office, two of them the highest office in the land, has gotten into hot water over something they've said or done, the first thing they do is cry sexism and loudly proclaim that they wouldn't be getting this treatment if they weren't women. I believe it's called playing the feminism card.
Well, it isn't going to work with this feminist, or I suspect any other woman who thinks a woman whether she's running for office, running her household or taking charge of her own body should be able to think for herself, act with deliberation and intention, and make intelligent decisions that affect the lives of her family or her country. Michelle Bachman and I may share the same chromosomes, but she has made it abundantly clear that we are light years apart on the roles and rights of women in these supposedly enlightened times.