Stuff This Wherever You Keep Your "Important Shit"

Welcome to the site that wants to take down the Democratic party. I know, you're as surprised as I am to read that it's due to actions like mine that Democrats can't win.

De-blogrolling Kos is the equivalent to planting a truck bomb under Dem Party headquarters, apparently. (I also de-blogrolled Atrios, Oliver Willis, and a couple others for whatever reasons. That probably means I'm Karl Rove's inside operative he never knew about.)

Imagine, all those years I've spent walking the streets handing out literature, all those days and nights working for Democratic candidates—guys like Bill Richardson, Howard Dean, and Herb Kohl—when all along I was secretly plotting the downfall of the entire party with just a few subversive clicks on my blogroll.

I should have been shaving my legs instead:

And like that, Kos is on the shit-list with the crowd who dares not shave their legs.

Us feminists—or Femi-nazis as Rush Limbaugh cheerfully calls us—are truly the spawns of the Republican devils, despite the fact the grunt work at most Democratic Party offices I've been to has been done by women volunteers, most of whom consider themselves feminists, (albiet some of them still shave their legs). How dare we demand our concerns be listened to, responded to without condescension, even!

(Ironically, the issue that provoked the pie fight at Kos—a semi-pornographic ad—is the type of issue that will win us Republican "values" voters. Feminists are against porn, because it objectifies women. We could turn around and say it's sites like Kos—that peddle "smut"—that are destroying the Democratic party. But we won't.)

Democrats, the natural beneficiary of the estrogen vote, are becoming their own party mascot, the ass, when it comes to women's issues. How many times did the subject of equal pay come up during the election? How hard did John Kerry run away from standing up for abortion rights? How many women did he consider for a running mate? How many times did he bring up child care in the national debates?

And how big a percentage of the women's vote did he win? Less than Al Gore, despite having a pretty good record on women's issues. They were instead shoved under the table, the very table where women were busy manning the phonebanks, while Kerry held forth about national security in case those women in the front row might be Security Moms.

As many of the voters I talked to during the primaries told me, women's issues are everyone's issues—men have daughters whose rights they want protected, spouses who deserve equal pay, parents that need elder care. But women are the ones who occasionally demand these issues be discussed.

When we do, we're told to sit down, raise our hands, and we'll be called on.

Maybe in our women's studies classes that will happen, but it hasn't lately in the Democratic Party. Instead, we're handed another stack of envelopes to stuff, another list of phone calls to make, and told to sit tight while the boys examine the poll results.

The Republicans didn't get where they are by ignoring their base. The Democrats did, however, get where they are—in the minority—by ignoring important issues like child care and equal pay, and the fact we are one Supreme Court justice away from a return to back alley abortions.

So compare us to Lieberman for daring to complain when we see pornography peddled on liberal sites. Call us traitors to the cause for refusing to be condescended to. (Then try to backtrack and call it "humor" when you accuse us of "challenging unity.") And go ahead, make my day: call me "sanctimonious and tedious," at the same time you're referring to your job as "important shit."

Important shit, my ass.

I've got too many envelopes to stuff to worry about your concerns that I'm destroying the Democratic Party, and too many elections to phonebank to care about whatever important shit Kos has up his ass.

So, if you're one of those who've come here to see the site that's out to destroy the Democratic party, go here instead.

If you'd like to read more about why we're so upset (especially at being called "humorless") and discover that some women are better at waxing philosophical than waxing their legs, go to one of these sites and read their wonderful posts on the same subject:

Shakespeare's Sister
Amanda at Pandagon
Lauren at Feministe
Elise at After School Snack
Catherine at Poverty Barn
Tami, the One True
Pinko Feminist Hellcat

Comments

[Rana]

Excellent post.

(And I'd love to shave my legs, but if I do, they become a mass of scabs and ingrown hairs. Uh, no thanks. It's not like I think with my calves, anyway.)

[KathyF]

It's cold here; we need the fur.

[Ginger Mayerson]

Thanks for this list, I've added them to mine, here and did you hear about how Kos is leaving the Dems because he hates hates hates aborition? I never even knew Kos had even had an abotion, poor guy. There's a link near the bottom of the post.

[NTodd]

Wait a minute! I just learned the other day that there are female bloggers, and now I find out they don't shave their legs and hate democracy? Excuse me while I go jump in the lake...

[Serge]

OK, I'll bite. What has Atrios been up to that you ditched him from your blogroll?

It's tough, by the way, working to destroy the Democratic Party from the inside. There's nothing like working for Howard Dean and then, on the night of your state's primaries, have your guy get trounced.

[KathyF]

OK, I'll bite. What has Atrios been up to that you ditched him from your blogroll?

Too many typos. I've been ordered by my therapist to stay away from sites like Steve Gilliard's and Eschaton that haven't been proofread.

That and the fact his posts are just way too cryptic for me. You have to click on every link, and I'm too lazy to do that. I want it spelled out.

[Kathy]

Excellent, Kathy, as usual.

Even we leg-shaving feminists are pissed.

[Chris Clarke]

Sheesh. Redheads.

Ow! Hey, that hurt! Please don't throw the toasted vegetable tart with walnut crust at me again! Or at least take it out of the cast iron pan!

Um, anyway.

Kathy, this post has the best title I've seen all day. You do high dudgeon so very well. Can we start a campaign to collect shaven leg hair and send it to Cole? It'd be a nice solidariity builder, because us guys could donate too. (For that, I'd even shave my back.)

[barb]

Hey, now you know how GLBT people feel. After all it was US and our unholy urges to get civil marriage licenses that's usually blamed in discussions of the Kerry loss. And we often DO have unshaved legs. Ha.

Sometimes I think people like Markos are THE PRIMO single issue bunch -- all they think of is winning, regardless of whether the win brings someone like Joe Lieberman or an anti-choice right-wing Dem. This is progress? As in progressive? Naw.

[Kathy P]

Hey, I never read Kos and now that I have, I still don't understand him/it.... I backtracked alkl this from Elayne Riggs, but I'm still clueless....Me, the apolitical blogger that I am....

[Diane]

Kathy, you are but a small-time traitor. I left the Democratic Party altogether, and it can kiss my ass, though there are actually a few Democrats left whom I like. I do shave my legs, though, so that just makes me altogether unclassifiable and mysterious.

[Betty Blogger]

Kathy, you make me want to be a Kathy too! I heard that freak The Heretik had something to say about this! I don't know if I would trust him.

He shaves his legs. And his head. And you wouldn't want to see his pay per view account. If he had one. But he doesn't.

[KathyF]

Chris, you didn't read the instructions. It goes in a tart pan. I save the cast iron for other nut jobs.

[Chris Clarke]

I was already making a pie-throwing joke in this particularly risky context. No way was I going to say "tart pan."

[NTodd]

I like tarts.

[ForeignTart]

Did you say tarts? The foreign ones are the best kind, they say.

[Chris Clarke]

To a first appproximation, all tarts are foreign.

[KathyF]

Otherwise they'd be pies. Which brings us back full circle, doesn't it?

[NTodd]

I also like pies. I'd never fight with one, though.

[Chris Clarke]

Oh, come on, NTodd. What if a pie told you it supported school vouchers and parental notification laws? You'd just sit there and say nothing?

[KathyF]

A food fight! Here in my cafeteria. Tomorrow IS food blogging...

It's a chili cookoff tomorrow. Get ready.

[NTodd]

Chris, I would just try to reason with the pie. And if it refused to listen, I'd drown it in whipped cream and eat it.

[Linkmeister]

With all this discussion of pies, I'm surprised Fafnir hasn't expressed an opinion yet (or is it Giblets? The Medium Lobster? The long-absent Chris?).

[ohno]

It's obviously not about the pie.

Kos' comments were the straw that broke the feminists back. Who the hell does he think he is to tell grown women what they should think and say?

And the Kos guys who spew the nonsense about us sitting down and shutting the fuck up? What kind of outsized ego does that take?

Yes it's true, a number of women are leaving the party. Some of my friends have been thinking about it for quite a while. Unfortunately, they are taking their "women's studies money" and their very lucrative rolodexes with them. But it's not just Kos and crew - they just happen to articulate that superior male thing well and went too far.

Me, I'm staying in the party for now. And I would guess I have a lot more access to the top of the party than Kos does. Believe me, they will definitely hear his name, for some of them it will be for the first time. And it won't be in a positive light. He will be known as the Democratic party's divisive anti-feminist who is chasing away major donors to the Green party. I'm sure that's fine with him. He doesn't seem to like having uppity women around anyway.

[KathyF]

Thanks for reminding me, it's not just grunt work women do. I organized house parties, and most of my contacts were women, who invited women they knew.

But joining the Greens isn't the answer. Supporting candidates who get it--male and female--is. The primary candidates I worked for didn't have the level of support they needed in the "establishment" to be nominated. We started a PAC, Seedpac, to support such candidates at the local level, with volunteer and financial support.

[Chris Clarke]

But joining the Greens isn't the answer. Supporting candidates who get it--male and female--is.

I sort of agree- and I'm a Green.

Just joining any political party isn't the answer. Getting involved in something - anything - beyond reading Kos and trudging off to the polls is the answer.

[where]

I think we need smart, organized, effective, progressive women in ALL the parties!

[KathyF]

Exactly, Chris. Politics is not a spectator sport, as I told many a MeetUp attendee.

[turmeric]

maybe the democratic party should be destroyed. a party run with some respect for feminist discussion would be a lot better than new england skull and bones cock rockers.