Obama signs the Fair Pay Act:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/30/us/politics/30ledbetter-web.html?hp
Sweetness
January 29, 2009 by lucierohan
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged democratization, egalitarianism, employment, income, politics, power | 8 Comments
8 Responses
Leave a Reply Cancel reply
Authors
Links to Like
N00bs: Read Before Commenting!
- advertising anarcha-feminism anatomy animal rights blog body image chauvinism children comedy cultural imperialism cultural shame democratization education egalitarianism emma goldman employment eve ensler exoticization exploitation fatphobia femininity feminism gender gendered insults gender roles Haiti homophobia identity imperialism income intersexuality Judith Butler Lady Gaga language makeup male privilege Matriarchy media men misogyny motherhood music new york times nytimes objectification patriarchy personal PETA politics pornography power pronouns queer identity race racism rape rape culture raunch culture relationships romance Sarah Haskins science sex sexism sexuality sexualization socialization Speciesism third wave trans issues vassar victim-blaming violence violence against women who we are
-
Recent Posts
Archives
Gender Agenda 
that was a funny picture.
it scares me when stuff like this happens. i like that progress is being made, even though it is really slow. but i also dont like that people might think “well, now women have it made” or “it took a man to do it” (as in, obama is a man, and most politicians are men, and thus, when women need legal recourse they inevitably must turn to men, who in signing bills into laws that provide for women’s rights, end up speaking for the women’s movement. it makes me feel nervous and powerless to utilize men’s dominance to the advantage of the women’s movement. but i suppose there is no way around it).
this was good. overall, i believe (for now) that obama signing this thing is good. but it reminds me of the above complications, which i wanted to just touch upon, in case it sparks another awesome n fiery conversation.
hey lucie, can i go back to all your posts, and add tags to them? they seem to be missing tags.
oh yeah go ahead. i keep on forgetting to add tags!
I share your concerns completely.
I try to think as pragmatically as I can. I’m reading this book for my Terrorism class about the concept of lesser evils and it basically says that people who have been historically oppressed cannot expect to be taken seriously if they want the reality of past injustices to dictate the outcome of the political conflicts of the present. In other words, the oppressed groups have to compromise even though historically their people were not shown the same courtesy. This argument makes me really nervous because i feel like people who use it sometimes just want to justify past injustices so we can forget about them and their implications. but i think it does carry a morbid truth, and its better than the other option. The other option, I think, is a kind of nihilism, in which the means (in our case, protest by way of blogging) becomes the end.
We shouldn’t forget the our end is not protest, it’s equality. Now it’s true that equality involves more than political gains, but political gains are a big part of it and political gains do make an immediate, tangible difference in people’s lives. The Fair Pay Act will make a tangible difference and will also help to shift the consciousness (not over night, but over many many years.) Of course, we should never abandon skepticism. But if this long overdue victory is not worth celebrating, if it’s not worth a feeling of accomplishment, then what is?
But Lucie, sometimes those compromises are made for no reason. Obama asked house democrats to drop family planning funds from the stimulus bill to get republicans to vote for it. In the end not a single one said yea anyway. The family planning money could have stayed and it wouldn’t have made any difference.
absolutely. i agree with you, lucie. about your theoretical reasoning. especially on the idea that our sights need to be set on the end goal of equality, and do what we need to do (minus something really bad like killing or something) to get there.
and alice paul, thanks for enlightening us yet again with another great point. this world is a miserable place.
word, alice. It was really bitter sweet for me to see the fair pay act article alongside that lovely piece of information. I wish obama had fought harder for family planning, especially since unwanted children do have a direct effect on many household incomes. bullshit, it has nothing to do with stimulating the economy.
I certainly don’t expect any woman (or man) to happily accept what happened with the stimulus package. we were, no doubt, thrown under the bus on this one and it’s going to happen a lot in the future.
I don’t, however, think this compromise was made for NO reason. I just wasn’t made with our interests in mind. I hate that our interests were the first to be sacrificed because I think they too often are. What interests should have been sacrificed, though? those of laid-off workers who need health care? those of schools and day care centers in need of renovation? now ultimately, the republicans didn’t vote for it anyway. hopefully Obama will learn from this experience.
I wouldn’t call the stimulus package a victory through compromise, but I would call the Fair Pay Act a victory through compromise. We should acknowledge victories, like the Fair Pay Act, when we see them, even if they are imperfect, and even if they have been reached through political means. Otherwise, I think we’re on a fast track to becoming friends of suffering.
If family planning had really been a dealbreaker, it would be a much less bitter pill to swallow, definitely. But as Barack Obama said in his statement on signing the Lilly Ledbetter act, what happens to women happens to the whole country. It disappoints me that he can see that this is true in one area, but not in another.
yeah, you’re totally right about that. thank you for sharing alice!