This was supposed to have been my birthday. It is also the 68th anniversary of the day a nervous young USN Ensign (home on shore leave) proposed to a college senior with whom he had been on three dates. They were my parents, and they were married for 49 years. My wonderful Dad died on January 22, 2000. Tomorrow, it will have been seven months since my Mom — my best friend, confidante, travel buddy and favorite person -- died. And I had a whole diary planned about the big shoes my feminist Mom left, that I have yet to fill.
But I live in Virginia, and for the last 28 hours (which seem so much longer), I have been on a tear about the horrifying photo from my Governor’s medical school yearbook and his stubborn refusal to resign and the ugly racism on this site (of all places) and the incalculable pain suffered by so many of our brothers and sisters here. If you have not yet read Denise Oliver Velez’s diary from this morning here, please do so.
*
Back in 1993, Groundhog Day the movie came out. It was the story of a weatherman who, as IMDB notes, “finds himself inexplicably living the same day over and over again.” And in Virginia, that’s how it feels today.
This Commonwealth was the site of the capital of the Confederacy. In the city where I live, this building still stands:
It was from this building that families were torn apart and men, women and children were sold to other people in chains.
This Commonwealth is the home of Charlottesville.
And, on February 2, 2019, the Governor of Virginia admitted to wearing blackface at a party in the 1980s and still refused to resign.
I was in law school in Virginia when the Governor was in medical school and that yearbook was published. This wasn’t 1864 — it was 1984. This was completely unacceptable then and it is completely unacceptable now. This isn’t debatable. it’s not excusable. We cannot keep revisiting this issue as if it were either.
And yet here we are. On an endless hamster wheel spoked with sexism, misogyny, racism, homophobia and generalized bigotry. These are intersectional wars.
Over and over again. On so many fronts. Just over and over and over again.
Women Running for Office
After electing an historic number of women to Congress (and state legislatures), we now have an historic number of qualified women running to be President of the United States. But instead of discussing their qualifications and their positions, we of course have to have to figure out first if they are “likable.”
Pinning down when being liked or likable became a thing for women in public life isn’t easy. Some accounts point to the lawmakers who praised the femininity and gentleness of Jeanette Rankin, first woman elected to Congress in 1917; University of Pennsylvania professor of political science Dawn Teele tells Glamour that “likability issues are as old as the suffrage movement.”
Celinda Lake, a noted Democratic pollster, says likability—for women leaders at least—dates back much farther. How far? “Cleopatra,” she says. She’s sort of kidding—and sort of not. For all the new science of measuring people’s views of their leaders, and for all the strides women have made in American public life (see the 2018 midterm elections), men and women are still judged by different standards in politics (and elsewhere). “This is deeply about gender roles, and how we see gender roles, and how we process gender,” Lake says.
Glamour Magazine
Health Care
I was a couple of weeks short of my 16th birthday when Roe v. Wade was decided by the United States Supreme Court. I’m now three days away from being eligible for Social Security. And we are still fighting to gain or keep access to this Constitutional right.
Virginia
Senate
Sen. Lindsey Graham again is pursuing a ban of abortions after 20 weeks, citing the ability of the unborn child to feel pain at that stage of fetal development.
Graham, recently chosen as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, proposed the new 20-week (five month) abortion restriction Thursday as part of his Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.
ABC4 News
Violence Against Women
I am old enough to remember the Boston Strangler and Ted Bundy. In the past month, men have gone on rage-filled murder sprees targeting women and these events are reported without mention of that crucial, salient point.
Thank you, Amy Klobuchar:
Title IX
I went to a progressive liberal arts college in New England. Classmates left school after being sexually assaulted. And the current Secretary of Education has proposed rules that would roll back important steps taken to address this hideous reality.
A report released Thursday by the Defense Department and based on an anonymous survey found that the number of sexual assaults at three military academies had spiked by nearly 50 percent in the past two years, even as actual reports of those assaults remained low, a disheartening figure that undermined claims of progress since a national conversation about sexual assault and harassment in the military began two years ago.
SLATE
[The proposed new rules would] allow schools to use a higher standard of evidence for adjudicating claims of harassment and assault, meaning it will be harder to find an accused person responsible. They also introduce a stricter definition of sexual harassment, defining it as “unwelcome conduct on the basis of sex that is so severe, pervasive and objectively offensive that it denies a person access to the school’s education program or activity.”
(snip)
In another key change, the regulations make it harder to find schools legally responsible for failing to address harassment. Under the Obama-era guidance, schools could be held responsible if they “reasonably should” have known about an incident of harassment or assault and did not act appropriately — under the new regulations, they would have to have “actual knowledge” of the incident.
VOX
They would permit the accused to cross-examine the accuser. Think of having to do that.
Thank you, Kamala Harris:
Sexual Harassment
When I was 23, I was assaulted in a parking garage by a senior editor at the newspaper where I worked. I reported it. Nothing happened.
Today:
John Lasseter, fired from Pixar for sexual harassment, is starting a new job at Skydance. So much for consequences.
While we would never minimize anyone’s subjective views on behavior, we are confident after many substantive conversations with John, and as the investigation has affirmed, that his mistakes have been recognized.
Variety
“Subjective views of behavior.” Oh.
Can we have too many ridiculously unqualified male buffoons running the show in the Age of Trump? No, apparently not.
Enough. Just enough.
As always, this WOW diary is a group effort. My thanks and gratitude for my sister diarists, who contributed so many great stories this week. The disorganization and errors are mine.