I've occasionally blogged about a few humorous (in hindsight) anecdotes from my undergraduate years. OLL in a SW San Antonio barrio had been a traditional Catholic women's college which a few years earlier had made a strategic decision to go coed. About the time I enrolled, maybe a third of the students were male, and there was a men's dorm. I know what you must be thinking: Dude, two girls for every guy, you must have been in dating heaven! The odds are in your favor... No, that really wasn't a factor. I was a 16-year-old geek who had never been on a date, didn't own a car. There were other factors that played a role: the college was a long bus drive from my military family based in south Texas; OLL has an excellent teacher education program, and I was leaning towards a secondary education degree (high school math/science); and I thought I might have a vocation for the Roman Catholic priesthood. I did date some as a student there, enough so that I put the religious vocation thing (i.e., lifelong celibacy) on the back burner.
I don't know how I got booked into a one-semester hour bowling/badminton class; it must have been my advisor's idea. OLL didn't have a bowling alley on campus, so one of my classmates, a married woman student, offered a few of us rides in her car. So there I was sitting in the back seat when she hit a pothole hard, and of all things a notebook behind me fell open into my lap--showing her ovulation schedule and temperatures. Talk about too much information: I don't even think I had seen my first Playboy centerfold yet..
But that was nothing compared when Helen Reddy's "I Am Woman" comes on the radio over her car speakers. I swear every woman in the car, humming the tune (you know when) glaring accusingly at me as the embodiment of the patriarchy. I'm thinking to myself, "Oh, shit! I haven't done anything; I haven't even been on a date yet." I seriously worried they were going to dump me out of the car in the middle of San Antonio.
On a lighter note, one lunch period in the college cafeteria, I'm getting ready to eat by myself when a pretty Latina at a table of coeds invited me to join them. "Well, this is different!" So I start eating when the same coed said, "Ron, we heard you treat us girls just the same as the guys." Well, that was unexpected; I literally choked when I heard that. I stammered out, "I hope not. I'm attracted to girls..."
Maybe it was the fact that 4 of my younger 6 siblings were sisters (plus my mom, of course). Most of my teachers and professors, my heroes and role models, were women. Most of my first bosses (work/study at campus libraries) had been women. Oh, I probably went through my own "girls have cooties" phase as a kid; I remember getting kicked off my Little League team because one of my 8-year-old teammates started needling me, singing I had a girlfriend (the ultimate insult at that age), and I threatened him if he didn't knock it off. (In hindsight, I wish it had been true...)
But ideological feminism had always been a turn-off, in part because of its presumptuous, judgmental orientation. I didn't apply double standards in my personal life, and I've had a couple of female supervisors in my career with a chip on their shoulders, e.g., "it's because I'm a woman, isn't it?" No, if I disagree with a stupid policy or decision, gender doesn't enter the equation. I've had male supervisors who also sucked. It's just over-simplistic, presumptuous judgment when you reduce a complex situation to a politically correct insult. At least men don't resort to "it's because I'm a guy, isn't it?" Superficial judgmental analyses and judgments don't lead to more respect for you as a person; it's intellectually lazy and pathetic, a complex world reduced to black and white. You're merely a puppet being manipulated by your ideological masters and/or seeking validation from your ideological peers.
In part, I've been repelled by the American obsession with gender in politics. (Now part of my issue with ideological feminism deals with the abortion issue. I've always been opposed to abortion, which has nothing to do with my religious beliefs.) I've written effectively if Lady Thatcher had been an American politician I would have voted for her. I cast my first vote for a female POTUS last November through Jo Jorgensen. It has more to do with policy and principles.
So what sparked this rant? Political correctness. Brion McClanahan recently pointed out a similar nuanced point in terms of celebrating Juneteenth vs. the 13th Amendment (which actually ended slavery in December 1865). McClanahan notes progressives don't want to acknowledge that because, in their view, slavery in name was replaced by exploitative labor practices that were nearly as bad. The point is, there was slavery in at least a couple of Union states as of Juneteenth. I don't deny life in the nineteenth century was hard for a bunch of folks including my immigrant ancestors. But slavery was done as an institution in the US by the end of 1865, no small matter.
The current PC issue deals with the reality of woman suffrage and the nineteenth amendment. Let me be clear: the idea women could be taxed and subject to the laws of the State but have no voice in governance is inconsistent with the ideas on which this country was founded, not unlike the status of slaves. The road to the 19th Amendment is complicated, but just like emancipation had momentum in the states before the Civil War, so did suffrage, especially in the territories and the Western states. Long overdue, of course. So what's the kerfuffle?
I'll loosely paraphrase a point of view among more than a few tweets: "I can't believe that we have to constantly point this out year after year, but the 19th Amendment gave only white women the right to vote. It look quite a while for the vote to trick down to women of this or that ethnicity.
Let's be clear. Here is the nineteenth amendment: "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation." I see no carveouts of exceptions for this ethnic identity or that. I'm really not sympathetic to the divisive construct of "white privilege". The issue isn't with it (or the fifteenth amendment, for that matter), but possibly with its enforcement across states and we expect SCOTUS and the Congress to guarantee implementation.
