In my last post (see http://sigma5.blogspot.com/2017/01/womens-lib.html) I made the case that women in large numbers believe that they are and deserve to be second class citizens. The core of my argument had to do with the last election. In this context the contrast could not have been more stark.
On the one hand you had a competent capable candidate who was a woman and who had a long record of advocating for and supporting the proposition that women are and should be first class citizens. On the other hand you had an incompetent and incapable candidate who was a man and who in both his behavior and his rhetoric treated women as second class (or perhaps even lower) citizens. Women should have voted for Clinton and against Trump in large numbers. But roughly half of them voted for Trump and that allowed Trump to win the election.
I can think of no stronger argument in favor of the proposition that large numbers of women, something on the order of half or more, believe that Trump was right. Since the election we have seen a flurry of activity. But it has appeared misguided and ineffective to me so far. The people on the Trump side figure it will all die down and amount to nothing in the end. It will eventually turn out to be the proverbial "tempest in a teapot". I am concerned that they are right.
But let's for the moment assume that they and I am wrong to this extent. Let's assume that effective action is on the way. What would it look like? Not what I have been seeing so far. So what are the alternatives? Here's what I would suggest.
It all boils down to who wins and who loses elections. The 2016 elections should have been a very good year for Democrats. It wasn't. Hillary lost in the place where it counts, the Electoral College. And it wasn't like she was an anomaly. Democrats should have won big in the House and the Senate. They didn't. "Staying competitive" in an election that was an uphill battle for them counts as a big win for Republicans. They did this at the national level. But they also did this at the state and local level. A friend of mine says Hillary lost because she ran a poor campaign. I disagree but she ran a good enough campaign that she would not have dragged candidates in down ballot races down with her. But relatively speaking Republicans did well all down the ballot.
And it is now important to set some context. Neither Hillary nor Donald holds anomalous views compared to those of their parties. Both parties have a long track record on the subject of whether they believe women are first class citizens or not. Democrats say they are and Republicans say they are not. But particularly in red states Republicans did just fine when it came to the women's vote. And they have been doing just fine with the women's vote for a long time. If something is going to change then women need to understand this and act accordingly. Voting patterns suggest that they don't understand this. So how does that get fixed?
As I said in my previous post, this is NOT a problem men can fix. It is a problem women can and must fix on their own. That is unless, of course, you are on the Trump side of the argument. Then everything is fine and nothing needs to be done. But, as I said before, we are going to take it as a given for the purposes of this post that Trump and his supporters are wrong. How do women change the situation?
I have long been a student of revolutions, successful and otherwise. One of the techniques people in power use to maintain control is to disrupt attempts by the opposition to organize. Disorganized revolutions never succeed. A classic example of this can be found in the 1960 movie "Spartacus" which concerned an attempt by slaves in the old Roman empire to revolt. It failed. And one technique the Romans used was to continuously decapitate potential leaders. They literally killed them by crucifixion in the movie.
Turning this around, successful revolutions need secure channels of communication so they can organize and find competent leaders. And one technique that has worked in multiple cases is to find a communication channel that flies below the radar, a channel that the powerful don't pay any attention to. In my previous post I outlined a number of these communications channels that are available to women. So that's not a problem. And the message is obvious. Women need to be convinced that they are first class citizens and that they should behave accordingly, at least in the ballot box. And the best people to do the convincing are other women.
But this will take a lot of organizational muscle. It's fine to have a slogan. But it won't be convincing unless there is a lot of detail to support it. Someone needs to go down the line with issue after issue. They need to do the analysis that demonstrates how an issue or a policy promotes or maintains women as second class citizens. They need to draw the line showing how support for a specific candidate or party results in women being put into or maintained in a disadvantageous position. And the argument needs to be structured so that ordinary women can understand it and can see how it applies to them personally.
Does this sound like the kind of work a lawyer does for her client when working in a court room in front of a Jury composed of ordinary citizens? Yes it does so lawyers are a good place to look for people who can do this sort of thing. And law schools are now turning out more female lawyers than they are male lawyers. So a large pool of women capable of doing this kind of work well exists. There have to be organizations for women lawyers out there. That is where to go to find the people you need to put together and run what amounts to a think tank.
There are plenty of women who are lawyers and are just the kind of people to put together the case for women as first class citizens. There just aren't enough of them to carry the message to every nook and cranny of the country. And female lawyers do not come across enough women and a broad enough cross section of women to reach women in the numbers necessary for this to work. So is there another group of women that is larger and better suited to this task? Yes, and it's a surprising one.
When you think of Sororities, what do you think? Just what is their mission? Sororities are the bastard stepchildren of Fraternities. The first Fraternity was formed in 1750 but the movement really took off in the early 1800's. They have evolved over time into the usual networking operation for the getting of and the maintenance of power. And by their very natures Fraternity membership is limited to men. No women allowed! Sororities were a "me too" response that began in the 1850's and grew as more women started going to college. But they never had the power Fraternities were able to acquire over time so they had to seek other goals. For a long time they seemed primarily focused on helping women get an MRS (get married to a rich and powerful man).
Sororities today still lack a well defined and compelling mission. So whatever they tell themselves it may be that their main mission still is assisting Sorority sisters in their pursuit of an MRS. Women who believe women are first class citizens aim higher. This means a lot of women either don't join a Sorority in the first place or stop participating as soon as they graduate. This leaves Sororities weak and, therefore, ripe for a takeover.
Only a modest amount of concerted effort would be necessary for a new group to succeed in taking control of the Sorority system away from its current leadership. And if their mission was changed to "support and advance the proposition that women are first class citizens" I think they could attract and hold the support of a much larger percentage of college women than they now are able to.
And there are Sororities and Sorority Sisters everywhere. They are particularly strong in just the areas where it is most important to turn the tide, the South. And they could open up auxiliary memberships for women who had not belonged to the Sorority in college or perhaps didn't even go to college at all. This would greatly increase their reach.
There are lots of events like Tupperware parties and the like. And anything will do: the PTA, church groups, exercise classes, watching the kids, etc. It doesn't matter what the occasion. The only criteria is that it is an event involving only women or at least mostly women. Then Sorority members could make sure the conversation regularly comes around to one or more of the ways this politician or that party or program holds women back. And the backbone of their case would be the simple proposition: "do you think you are and deserve to be a second class citizen?" If the answer is "NO" then everything else follows smoothly from there. If the answer unfortunately is "yes" then the more basic problem must first be rectified.
And this can all be done quietly. "It's just us girls having a friendly chat". And women don't have to be convinced to confront their husband or march into their boss's office. They just have to be convinced to change the way they decide how they will vote. And if they feel the need to lie about how they voted, they should be told it is okay to do so. "Loud and proud" is not necessary. All they have to do is cast their secret ballot appropriately. They can always choose to leave the noise making to others.
No one would notice if the Sorority system gets taken over by a new generation with a different attitude. Everybody is used to the Sorority system not being a power player in society at large. So if some kind of upheaval takes place it might or might not get covered. But the upheaval, if it was covered at all, would not be covered as important political news. So a bunch of women lawyers getting together to do some think tank work would likely pass unnoted. And a takeover of the Sorority system would probably garner a little coverage. But seriously, how do you think that coverage would rank with whatever outrageous Tweet The Donald just made. So these changes would have little or no trouble flying under the political radar.
But it is important that the movement have a front organization whose job it is to make noise. Well, it turns out that there is a ready made organization for that too. It is called the Daughter's of the American Revolution. This is another women's group. And it has long had a conservative bent. And it has not had much political clout since Eleanor Roosevelt was fist lady before World War II. It has long been seen as a hide bound organization catering to little old conservative ladies. And this is a case of perception matching reality. It is now way more sclerotic than even the Sorority system. That will make it easy pickings for a takeover by a rebel faction. All that is needed is to organize the rebel faction.
And the DAR has a presence in Washington, D. C. I am reminded of this a couple of times a year when the announcer on the popular TV quiz show "Jeopardy!" tells us that one of their tournaments is coming to us from "DAR Constitution Hall". So first the DAR is taken over by a rebel faction. Membership is governed by bylaws and a new leadership team can change the bylaws. So they open up membership to say any woman who is a US citizen. The specific mission of the new DAR would be to make noise.
They would provide the fireworks that would create political cover for the rest of the movement. Others could say "At least we aren't as radical as those New DAR nuts. So go along with us and we will eventually be able to reign them in." That sort of thing. They would be the IRA to Shin Fein, as an example. The idea would be that the New DAR would be a relatively small organization consisting of women that wanted to speak out, that didn't mind attracting a lot of attention. They would make the noise that would allow mass change to take place quietly in the shadows.
And if you want a "stretch objective" take over the United Daughters of the Confederacy. This organization only dates back to 1894. But it is the organization that traditionally has provided political cover in the South for the perpetuation of the worst of the Confederate excesses. Many Civil War monuments commemorating various Confederate heroes or battles won by the Confederate Army were built by the UDC. But the organization has less than 20,000 members. So it wouldn't take a large operation to take it over. And it is located almost exclusively in the areas most in need of being turned. Taking over the UDC would NOT pass unnoticed. But I think it could be done.
So in short the plan would be for groups of women lawyers to operate like a think tank. They would develop the policies and hone the arguments. The national Sorority system would be taken over. The Sorority system would be reoriented toward supporting the goal of women as first class citizens. Their job would be to do the one-on-one or small group work necessary to convince women that they need to change how they vote. The front line agitation group responsible for ginning up publicity for the cause would be a New DAR, the current DAR with new leadership and a new mission. It could possibly be joined by a New UDC operating in parallel.
The first two groups, the layers and Sororities, would maintain a low profile. The third and possibly fourth group would be the "loud and proud" component that would put a face on the movement. They would be the ones specializing in the kind of good TV that gets you in the news these days. But they would emphasize their small numbers. This would allow the opposition to discount them as a minority that can safely be ignored.
I think doing this will take a while. So it would not be realistic to expect results before the 2022 "off year" elections. But I would like to believe that this kind of thing has a very good chance of success. And of course if it did have a large degree of success in 2022 the cat would be out of the bag. But then the question would become whether the movement could sustain itself. And that would depend on whether women were capable of a sustained effort.
Finally, let me point out that this whole post is an example of a guy telling women what they should do. That's a fair complaint. But women did not manage to figure out what to do and how to do it effectively in the 2016 election. And the 2016 election was the columniation of a long trend. Women have had plenty of time to figure this out by themselves. They manifestly haven't. It's not too late. I invite women to come up with something better. I am results oriented so "better" means "works" in my book. So I'm all ears.
I would be happy if women all on their own come up with something better and make it work. But short of that I would settle for them just doing a good job of implementing the plan I have laid out. The next few years will tell us if even that is too much to ask.
And anger directed at me is misdirected anger. And we already have way too much of that sort of thing flying around. Anger is good. It is more than good. But it needs to be directed in a direction that will actually result in things changing for the better.
