When you choose to found a group with the moniker, the “National Organization of Women,” you should be a supporter of all women, not just the ones that agree with you. Otherwise, you need to be honest and renounce the “Women” part of your organization and rebrand it as the “National Organization of Us.”
I have to say that most of the issues affecting America today come right down to Women – jobs, education, healthcare, debt. As caregivers, mothers, wives, women make decisions that effectively make America turn, and yet, the issue that is most, if not solely associated with women is abortion. For political purposes, women are smashed into two groups – those that are Pro-Choice and those that are Pro-Life. We’re defined by that because it has worked to keep us controlled. While there are those women who feel abortion is their only issue and they are completely committed to one side or the other, the majority can see both sides and that same majority don’t like it, but we’ve seen our own friends who have been raped, challenged and struggling with decisions that no woman ever wants to make.
The issue of abortion has clouded our decisions on politics as well as the two party system. The latest marketing campaign in the politico’s toolbox has been the “War on Women” campaign, suggesting that Republicans don’t have women’s issues in their scope. I don’t know about a “war,” but I would agree that the Republican Party is dominated by men and religious groups, both of which have their own agenda and Women are not it. But make no mistake, the Democratic Party does not care about Women’s issues either. Sure they say they care about women because they want to protect our reproductive rights, but when did that become our main issue. The answer to protecting women is to vote for Women who claim to be for Women First and Party Second. A Women First agenda means more compromise, more compassion. Most women know their decisions affect the children of our country. A Party agenda only focuses on party issues.
For years, the National Organization of Women have made us think they are in our corner, but if you want to know who’s looking out for Women, you need to take a look in the mirror. That’s it. YOU.
How do I know? Recently, the Sewell-Belmont House & Museum named their 2012 Alice Award Honoree – former First Lady Laura Bush. Paul formed the National Women’s Party and fought for Women’s right to speak in the political process. Laura Bush used her position to expose the imbalance of literacy among men and women, taking the United Nations to task in 2008, “The percentage of women who lack literacy skills remains unchanged. If women are educated, everything across the board improves for their families.”
In 2007, Texas Tech University established theLaura W. Bush Institute for Women’s Health in order to understand how diseases affect women. Prior to the 21st Century, research focused on men and extrapolated their findings to include women. We now know women are different and diseases affect them differently.
So you can see my distaste when one of the co-founders of the National Organization of Women, Sonia Pressman Fuentes, vehemently opposed the Alice Award honor for Laura Bush. Sending a now public letter to the Sewell-Belmont board that states in part,
“I couldn’t believe my eyes. It’s not partisan. I’m not complaining that she’s a Republican. I’m complaining that she’s never done anything for women to get this award.”
The Washington Post even seemed taken aback adding more excerpts from Fuentes,
“Her advocacy on behalf of Afghan women is commendable, but she has been conspicuously absent in every major arena of American women’s rights, nor has she challenged her party’s anti-feminist agenda in any meaningful way.”
And like most Mean Girls, Fuentes had 21 of her closest friends sign the letter as well. Too date, the names are being protected, but the WP states that the letter was “signed by more than 20 feminist activists, including some former Sewall-Belmont board members and a past president.”
Hmmm… Marty Langelan was the Past President from 1999 to 2006 and she and Fuentes seem tight in this photo. In fact, here’s a great Flickr photo stream of Senator Olympia Snow getting the award last year. Looks like a lot of important women there…and yet…with all these powerful women, no one is grooming, selecting, supporting more women to run for congress. The whole event looks like a good ol’ boy party. Alice Paul must be turning in her grave.