REAL WOMEN WON'T REMAIN TOKENS http://www.geocities.com/realwomenbynumbers/realwomen_nottokens.html
To the Real Women and Real Men of the World Watching And, For: Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Susan Collins, and the other Once-Female 13 of the 100 Sexators. This message is also sent for Kim Gandy of NOW (which has let itself degrade from the National Organization of Women into the National Organization for Waiting) and Eleanor Smeal (who has thus far also let Feminist Majority fail to fulfill its name in the American scene, compared to real feminist majorities in the now far more gender representative governments of many other nations) (Please Note: This letter faces the shocking truth of the US situation, with a bit of hyperbolic language, to make a point. It is meant as a confrontation of concerned friendship, like the moment of confrontation between the Shirley Maclaine and Ann Bancroft characters in the movie, The Turning Point. Indeed, the intent of this is to recognize that feminism and women in the United States, and men, too, are at a Turning Point, a crisis where the result can either be growth, or the end of growth and death for both nation and planet. The intent of it is ultimately not to blame or embarrass, but to galvanize long overdue wisdom and change. The women of the US Senate have made important achievements, which we applaud, and do not mean to demean. Yet resting on a plateau of yesterday's laurels has become very dangerous when there was a critical need YESTERDAY to move fully forward in order not to fall backwards and down. Many of the current woes of the US stem deeply from the failures of the women in the US Senate and Congress, and other well known women in the US, to call for and achieve in numbers what women of many other nations have already now achieved. The intent here is to help the women of the US Senate wake up to act as real women heroes before further disaster overtakes nation and world, not to shame them.) Why is it that the women of France, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Belgium, Italy and many other western European Nations, Costa Rica, Argentina, Mozambique, South Africa, soon India, and many others have been able to achieve 33%-50% women in their national and state legislatures, and many other nations, including China and Vietnam have reached nearly 25%, but American women haven't gotten above 13% yet? Why is it that other nations, like Switzerland among others, have adopted economic indexes that count and value women's work, including domestic work, more fairly, while the sinking anti-female US economy is dragging down the world because it does not? In the US, we are so often told that as a nation, we are number one. Yet, when it comes to women's representation, and women and men in balance, we Americans sure aren't number one. Indeed, compared to our corporate and military dominance (as opposed to real and democracy-based power, which we are rapidly losing), our women seem to be among the most ironically and comparatively powerless, effectively disenfranchised, coopted and delayed of all the people of the earth. That is because currently letting-themselves-be-coopted women in the US Congress, most especially the Sexist Senate - the SEXATE, have had too low numbers there for too long. Yes, they have currently let themselves become tokens, and they tend to stifle the leadership of women in the House. They are starting to think and act like there is only one gender, one way to achieve representation (raise MORE money to elect A FEW MORE women at a time in the next corrupted $election$), and one world economic view - corporate alpha-male. No matter how much we'd like think of them as heroines right now, women who try to think, act and vote like men to fit in to the sick system built by alpha-men who've excluded women for generations, have lost their mantel of leadership. Undoing there own womanhood while they suffer an ignoble and unworthy small, caged existence surrounded by too many men and not enough women in government, they deserve only one label - eunuch - until they start thinking and acting like women and for women, real women who respect the real beauty, power and ethics of other women and all full human beings, men and women, again. Consider these three very recent and current glaring examples: 1. When a handful of less coopted, beautifully braver real women of the US House of Representatives walked over to the Senate hearing rooms to use open human communication, non-violent protest methods, and confront old man Sexator Jesse Helms on not bringing up the CEDAW Treaty, (the UN Treaty for Comprehensive Elimination of Discrimination Against Women) the female eunuchs of the US Senate were nowhere to be found. They never even mention the incident on their websites. So much for sisterhood. (Not one man of the House or Sexate cheered the House women either. So much for working together on real women's issues. But then again, without backup from their sisters in the Sexate and any major women's groups, could women have expect men to join in?) 2. But even more incredible, beautifully braver House women of the misnomered Florida 14 - which included and stood for many women and men not just from Florida, challenged the Florida vote and the installation of an unelected alphaest-male Executive. At that fateful moment, only one Senator's vote was prodecurally needed to bring the matter to debate before the joint session, C-Span and all the nation and world watching, to prevent the greatest majority of votes nationwide - women's - from being ignored to install women's least preferred Presidential ticket. Yet, amazingly not one of the females-becoming-eunuchs of the Sexist Senate came forward. Instead, against the advice of the League of Women Voter's assessment of the electoral college vs. the American people, the female tokens of the Sexate chose a fixed Electoral College and Supreme Nonsense over the American women and people, right along with the rest of the white alpha-male Sexators. Taking their orders from Tom Daschle and Trent Lott, party became far more important to them than either gender or principle. Bill Rehnquistador was sure happy to see all the female eunuchs ignoring and disenfranchising so many millions of their own sisters of all races nationwide, and listening, instead, to His Supreme Honorable Maleness and the gavel of the little white southern premature capitulator Al, who apparently thought the Supreme Court could turn fascist on us, and that was OK with him and his little gavel. Oh well, the ticket should've been headed by a female anyway had they not been busy avoiding leadership and acting like eunuchs, compared to the women of Canada, England, India, the Phillipines, Switzerland, Turkey, Indonesia, and many other nations that have already had females who dared to run for, and succeeded in becoming Chief Executives. In the critical election year of 2001, none of the female eunuchs of the Sexate felt "ready" yet, and so they similarly didn't feel ready to offer one vote to the Florida 14, and protect the votes of the majority of American women and citizens, on January 17, against an unelected and least preferred Executive). 3. After such female eunuch performances of abandoning the votes of their sisters and the braver people of conscience of the House who broke the male party line on these critical matters, it should surprise no one that the truly beautiful Barbara Lee was the only real woman left in the House with enough remaining outspoken courage and brains left to warn against giving an unelected Executive male-domination, unrestricted force powers in a world system already careening toward terrormageddon, one of the faces of testostormageddon. The other House women clearly had been, for the moment, marshalled back into male dominance politics as usual, cowed and brought in line by - guess who - the once trusted but now coopted female eunuchs of the Sexate, and the alpha-male-henchmen Sexators of both major parties. But peacewager Barbara Lee, a real national and world class leader, stands for tens of millions of women - and men - peacemakers and preventers; wiser human beings who remember what Martin Luther King, Susan B. Anthony, Alice Paul, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Sonia Gandhi, and many women of Scandinavia, France, Germany and other nations (far better leaders than the Sexate's female eunuchs and male Sexators), and a vast majority of non-sexist European and worldwide leaders, many women but real men, too, in contrast to American sexist alpha-males, have successfully stood for. In fact, Lee represents the billions of men and especially women, who believed in real representation and human empowerment, peace and balance, too, who have been kept out of the Sexate throughout its hi$tory. A more gender representative Senate, more like those of many of the above nations, likely would not NOT have had the same war-whoop culture, and nearly unamimous outcome and skewed debate in favor of violence over a World Court and world community approach. That likely could have lead to smart diplomacy that would have captured Bin Laden by now had it been implemented intelligently instead of dominance-force. Instead, now members of the Senate and Congress themselves live in fear of the inevitable karmic reactions to its own violence-first, escalatory actions, and its arrogant betrayal of the Florida 14. In addition, years ago, real female leadership would have called for feminist and clear media exposes of the inevitable hateful madness that grew unchecked in at least one of 52 harem children, with their bejeweled but terrified multiple mothers, wives of one Saudi patriarch, masquerading as ideology or Islam. Saudi harems, and continued Middle East oppression of women, tolerated by our petro-business male dominated corporations, may be producing many mad, mentally disturbed children. Harem marriages and the intense misogyny of the Middle East are a breeding ground for terrorist sons and eunichized daughters. Feminists knew for decades it could not be otherwise, but that is not discussed in our oil-company-monied male dominated Congress and female-Senate-eunuch installed government, because the women of the Sexate let themselves be tokens for too long. Still, there is hope. It's not too late for the women of the Congress and interested organizations and the public at large, joined by men of wisdom of all races, to act together like the leaders of Scandinavia, France, India, and a fairly large list of nations that show up the gender regression in the US for what it is, and to use the techniques of nonviolent leaders of self-representation, equality and communication of simple truth force like ML King, Mahatma Gandhi, Mandela, Sonia Gandhi, Corazon Acquino, and many others. It is still not too late for the Senate's "'old' and new girls" to learn a few new, really rather simple "tricks" to represent women and their wiser preventive policies, as well as real and gentle-men - all people, and protect the world. If they did so, even many alpha-men might just turn over a new leaf, and become real gentlemen themselves. Many women in the US and worldwide are now asking themselves: Could it be that the women, and non-sexist men, of America have tolerated gradualist, misdirected leadership from the Sexate women and once major but now often coopted organizations far too long? Could it be that the women in the US Congress are so caught up in the money raising game that they failed to notice that the women of all the above nations achieved success NOT by raising money. The women of these nations achieved success simply by a vanguard of courageous publically recognized women officeholders' and leaders' fair (bullyNOT, but just as powerful) pulpit for gender fair representation. Their technique was to focus on and communicate about parity, proportion, balance, or at least 1/3-1/2 representation for both genders, and give validation to nothing less. They used all the techniques of communication - joint papers, press releases, manifestos, websites, emails, and faxes, assisted by sit ins and marches at their national legislatures and party headquarters. It is a technique that protects and represents racial minorities better, as well, and insures intelligent, peace-building policies by their nations, that bring real security instead of a garrisoned state. Women are good at communication when they try. Why haven't the female eunuchs of the Sexate, and the not yet representationally effective women's organizations, tried this? Using these simple human techniques of communication, the women of many other countries have been able to obtain the men of their parties, often even opposing parties, to join in on their filibusters, marches, sit-ins and now email campaigns until the balance of both genders was achieved. Yet, if you look at the websites of the female eunuchs of the US Sexate, you find nothing about a minimal 1/3, let alone 50-50 balance of gender in representation as the first preventer of terror and depression and makers of real peace and stable prosperity. You find little on affirmative action. These coopted Sexistors websites are silent on these issues and the better progress of women in other nations, as tongue-removed eunuchs should be. These eunuchs' powers of feminine esteem and affirming thought have been castrated by being too few women hanging out with and trying to "be accepted" by too many white alpha-males for too long. Only when they state, request, and insist upon 33-50% of bother genders will they be caring women again, and affirm their sisters and fellow citizens of both genders and all races. Women of other nations show us examples of real women. In Iceland, Finnbogedottir, the many termed female head of a nation, achieved balance of gender in their legislature via sitting in and marching in the 1970's, and many great women of all Scandinavian nations followed her example and achieved the goal way back then, often going on to become national presidents. (If Ferraro had done that, perhaps she wouldn't have cancer now - she'd be holding office instead.) Sonia Gandhi, a leader of the equivalent of the Democratic Party in India, has been able get a law awaiting passage that would require at least 33% of both genders in the Indian legislature and every state legislature of India. In 1996 in France, ten prominent women politicians from both sides - right and left - of the political spectrum published a manifesto demanding that the concept of political parity of the genders be included in the French constitution - by 1999 , this was achieved because of their leadership, which easily won the hearts of Frenchmen officeholders as well. In the Phillipines, a country that has had women Presidents now, women's organizations are leading the movement of worldwide gender balance in legislatures publically. In comparison, too many American women's groups fail to mention parity in representation on their website main banners. And even worse, Diane Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, Hillary Clinton, Mary Landrieu and the other fancy females-becoming-eunuchs of the of US Sexate thus far, do not have one word about parity representation of both genders on their websites. Apparently, none of them have had the courage to introduce, let alone stand, sit-in, and deliver, the parity legislation now on the books in so many other countries. In a very sad sense, these self-disempowering gradualists are beginning to resemble the disengaged and self-disempowering mothers of daughters who are incested upon by patriarchal sex-abusing fathers; i.e. when the daughters expected their mothers to stand up and protect women and decency effectively, these mothers sat down and looked the other way when the vast majority of women's votes were raped by the Supreme Court decision, the all-male tickets and political horse-trading of both major, or should we say, merely maler, parties. The female eunuchs of the Sexate also fail to focus on how their nation has fallen behind many others in gender balance, and thus, governments that build lasting real peace, for years, when you hear them chirp as good little eunuchs on alpha-male- controlled TV. Why don't they dare to speak up about the gender representation achievements of the Nordic Countries, France, South Africa and the Indian sit ins when the cameras are rolling and live? Are they afraid to let US sisters know what CAN be done --- and what they COULD do if they tried using just one more ounce of their courage and/or brains? Is it because they think they're more of a "sexy celebrity" if they talk about vaginal and breast issues, certainly important, but, very divisive to women under a male-dominant regime, and definitely not as central as the low levels of representation that keeps women's health and all health education reactive, privately managed by male-run care that isn't so caring, and expensive instead of preventive? Does vanity and narcissism make them feel more like celebrities if they are 13 among 100 instead of 50 among that 100? Or do they just still unconsciously think of themselves as perpetual victims climbing a ladder that at the current gradualist rate will take another 100 years to reach equality - if the whole yet testosterone-tipped ladder of government doesn't kill life on earth, including itself, and topple before then? Is a complacent-low-self-esteemed, I'm-still-the-victim-and outnumbered-gender in politics, the graduali$t mentality, of the women of the US Sexate, (and too many women's organizations), an acceptable leadership strategy for a critically endangered world? Do you remember any week long sit-ins in the Congress (like that held by women in India) in the US Congress by Patricia Ireland, Eleanor Smeal, and the women Senators or any US feminists, on the parity representational issue? Probably not, and that's because they haven't held any (YET), despite the fact that they already have more funds than women's groups in many already more successful countries like much of Europe, India, Mozambique, South Africa and the Phillipines. American women have been so focused on vaginal rights and breast protection that they've forgotten the it was the REPRESENTATIONAL BALANCE ESSENTIALS that has successfully brought protection to ALL women's, including reproductive choice, as well children's rights, and health protection, in other nations. And the really sad thing is that with modern telecommunications, sit-ins are perhaps not even necessary. If they wanted to, these female so-called leaders and their loyal supporters certainly need only dare to personally insist on 33-50% representation of each gender as a minimum, from their televised floor speeches, websites, by fax, and free and inexpensive large scale bulk email outreach that unites with the success and leaders of women in the other nations. But, alas they've been just too busy raising funds for their next gradual-trickle $election or token photo-up on the male-dominated media that has brought us mindle$$ media and democracy-poor "$election$", or so "busy" careening from one testosterone-caused crisis to the next to recall that they should have introduced and delivered gender parity - if just to avoid the next testostorone-induced world crisis. So, the rest of us by word of mouth, phone, fax and Internet can just do the work for them. and wait for them to wake up, catch up and lead if they wish to be called woman, sister, or Senator again. But, until then, these becoming-dodo birdies have let themselves become part of the problem instead of part of the solution. We will call them eunuch instead of woman, and Sexator instead of Senator, until they, if they hold office, ACHIEVE the parity of both genders that America deserves in order to be a leading and peace-strong nation, again. We understand that their passive, gradual eunuchism is the underlying cause of the dominance, shiek vs. ex-shiek vs. stock mogul-war system that exists both in the US and the misogynist nations of the Middle East. Even though the tactics of the alpha-male gangs and dominator governments may look a little different on the surface; a lack of adult women in government is their resemblance. The 13 women of the US Sexate resemble nothing so much as a trapped, psychically mutilated harem -- and until they bring far more women into representative office, they remain almost as trapped. Some women in the Middle East have suffered genital mutilation; yet the women in the Senate still suffer and enable the mutilation of democracy. Neither condition should be acceptable to full human beings. (And male Sexators who perpetrate and tolerate such levels of domination of the other gender can hardly be called fully human anymore, either.) So-called lady Senators -- once females but not becoming eunuchs -- we are tired of waiting. We want you to dare and deliver, yesterday, as women elsewhere have. You were put in office to get a foot in the door of government so you could open it wide for many, many women and their wisdom. Instead, on your watch, for the past three decades, you have pursued "safe" $trategie$ that have produced not a flowing river of righteous women in the Senate, but only a trickle that is now becoming a poisoned corporated-tokenized dribble, where the real milk of humanity, like the noble Barbara Lee, was most needed to flow. You once were the vanguard, but what have you let yourselves be turned into? You yourselves have become tokenized at a level far below 33-50%, so that you yourself have begun to vote as testosterized female eunuchs just to "fit in" with the Sexators of male-dominated parties, and you are beginning to corrupt and infect the women in the House with eunuchism (some call it centrism, more call it compromise of principle and humanity) as well. It is time you revisit the 1960's, 1970's and 1980's, and pick the wisdom of the Nordic women that was there for you to model, way back then, and has now been learned and used effectively by women wiser than you have yet become, in nations around the world. They all fought first and foremost for the representation of their gender, instead of settling just for breast exams. They fought FOR representation now instead of fighting OVER abortion, and got enough representation quickly so that all women could raise their voices together to protect women and children both. Perhaps your backslid mentality was inevitable once you agreed to the gradual approach, instead of the decent balance requirements now emerging worldwide from women with voices unwilling to be cowed by Sexators like Jesse Helms and the pandering big kissing, small courage Demoadulterers and Voteabandoners, and their coopted chorus line of caged birdies waiting for some alpha-male, like Clinton, to save them. In more naive times, the gradual approach, often dependent on the actions of a single male President, looked good and easier on the surface. But it was a poison pill; leaving you exposed to unmitigated and unbalanced testosterone toxins and crises, day after day. The poison is creeping female eunuchism, a form of self-induced cancer caused by too low numbers of women trying too patiently to fit in with an alpha-male system, that now afflicts you. Achieve the laws that increase your numbers immediately, as the women of other nations have done, or be called the tokens you have let yourself become, the not even close to number two in proportionate decency, that you have let your nation become. There are no real reasons, but certainly many excuses. Yes, it is hard to think when you are daily surrounded by so many alpha-males ...and a cushy salary. Yes, men raise more corporate money than you for $election$. But was that ever a system acceptable to the wisdom of women in the first place? And oh, yes, there's blather that, my heavens, it would require a Constitutional Amendment. No problem - it did so in all these nations, thank you. And, so did getting the vote for women - something the very unfancy but real woman Susan B. Anthony was proud to be arrested for, if you recall...And she had to communicate her cause by steam locomotive and telegraph, not fax and email - what took decades then could today take a few weeks if you assigned staff and friends to it. Why don't you just go for it??! And let's speak the truth, in its present form (absent a gender parity clause) the US Constitution was never in fact ratified by even ONE woman. As far as the women of this nation go, it was simply grandfathered in, and never grandmothered, at all (since even the indirectly influential and brilliant Abigail Adams was forceably barred from direct participation that could have improved its flaws from the outset). The Electoral College, (and Senate itself, for that matter) was set up to deal with the issue of regional proportion in representation, and it does so very poorly and distortedly. Shouldn't gender proportion be the far realer, better bargain - the price, if you will, of ANY American woman (as French women have now bargained successfully) of calling their Constitution a really wise and ever really approved document? How dare you, eunuch-like, daily uphold the unbalanced residue of the alpha-male exclusion system that redisenfranchised those millions (women, people of color, people without corporate portfolios) by force and prejudice in the first place, redisenfranchising those who fought for a meaningful vote for so long? Are you not, defacto, upholding the exclusions by daily inattentiveness to affirmative action and balance? WHAT IS YOUR EXCUSE? Fear? Let the womens' bravery of Alice Paul, Benizar Bhutto, Sonia Gandhi and Susan B. Anthony reinspire you to --- oh how scary ---send out nonstop emails and press releases on the issue until it has succeeded, as the women in France did so successfully in 1996 leading to their laws of parity now. If you had done that, you would not have had to fear hypocritical impeachments, phony elections, attacks on our testoster-nation, or to fear opening mail in an over-testosteroned crisis of today, which threatens to become worse and worse until you act as women and for women, again. You can be sure of one thing -- if America does not overcome its backward second class representation of a gender very soon, it and much of the world its policies effect, may never again know security and peace. Because, without enough women in government to move beyond a token level, your nation's policies will continue to be so short-term, testosterone-driven, aggressive and lacking in feminine judgement and long-term nurturing-intuition that it will cause disasters upon disasters that make September 11 look like a minor accident.. What problems will continue and worsen? A dead-end economy because it has no index for real women's work, stress illness and lesser healthcare, male-corporate coopting of its Congress and diplomacy, poor family leave, poverty and social unrest, invasion of privacy and a garrison state siege mentality, schools that become fortresses to protect students from neglected little boys, large rates of incarcerating its poor, backward and exploitive energy policy that carves up the Balkans and the Middle East for oil, but supports harem-holders who threaten their women, an energy policy that contaminates Washington and threatens Nevada and Alaska while ignoring the warmth of earth, wind and sun, and attracts ongoing resentment and hatred from regions around the world. Again, these US-resentful regions are just slightly more primitive mirror images of the misogynist, we-control-women-by-force culture of dominance of the Sexate that subtly threatened force of dominance to throw the House women, the women and their constituents that you gave no back up, out of their moments of attempted open communication and confrontation with dear old Jesse over CEDAW. It was just that kind of dominance that the sons and *daughters* of slaves heard in Al Gore's prematurely silencing Rehnquistadorian gavel dropped without a peep of protest by the Sexate's female eunuchs. That gavel of male dominance proved his candidacy to be the pandering sham toward women, as well as people of color, that many people suspected his all male-ticket (which none of the female eunuchs even tried to head and share) portended in the first place. Just a few years ago, it was similarly short-sighted, testosterone-tipped gavels that appropriated weapons to the known wife-beaters of Afghanistan in the first place, and then left their families (and women) to starve after these uneducated men served their purpose of proxy war for oil against the alpha-males of Russia for US alpha-male energy companies - can we really be surprised they have turned on their alpha-male "benefactors" now? Message continues (feel free to copy and post) at http://www.geocities.com/realwomenbynumbers/realwomen_nottokens.html __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Make a great connection at Yahoo! Personals. http://personals.yahoo.com
