Women in Powerful Positions

Why do conservatives hate Nancy Pelosi? I asked myself that question and had no trouble at all in coming up with an answer. She is a self-assured, outspoken, powerful woman who has great success playing a man’s game. Therefore, she is threatening to conservatives in ways that they cannot even begin to comprehend. It is exactly the same reason that they are threatened by gays, even when they ARE gay.

You will notice that the people that hate Nancy Pelosi are the same people who love all of the snide jokes about Hillary Clinton. That is also easy to understand. If they feel threatened by Nancy, you have to understand that they are absolutely terrified of Hillary, who is likely to be the next President. To balding, middle-aged men whose minds are mired in the mud of the Middle Ages, there is nothing scarier except perhaps a ban on Viagra.

Women comprise a little more than half of our population, yet are represented by 16% of the membership in Congress. I think that we can safely say that this is primarily due to the long-standing efforts of men, especially conservative men, to keep women barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen. It has been especially difficult to overcome this discrimination in the Halls of Congress, long the bastion of men who discriminated against everyone that was not a white male of European descent.

Now we have Nancy Pelosi, who seems totally and completely willing to shake up everything about these institutions. All that I can say is, “Go, Nancy!” I can’t think of a place that needs a more energetic shaking. Outspoken women, unafraid to voice new ideas and new directions, are eminently qualified to do the shaking. Too long left in the shade, these are women that intend to spend some time in the sun.

Of course, I am not the only one that has noticed that Hillary does not always seem warm and womanly. In fact, sometimes she seems to have a very male reserve about her. But if you stop and think about what she has been through on her route to becoming a presidential candidate (including Bill’s less endearing moments), perhaps you can see why she has learned to hold in her emotions. To this point, feminine emotion has often been the bane of a political career.

This is changing slowly, and perhaps with the election of a female President, the United States can begin to escape the Dark Ages in which conservative men have kept us mired, at least in political terms. I, for one, am very tired of seeing men debate women’s issues in the halls of Congress. It is high time that men had reason to complain about women debating, and deciding on, the issues of their gender. Remember, to be truly representative, we need more women than men in the Congress. Oh, what fun!


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