Sabrina has already posted on Women’s Equality Day, and I applaud everything she says.
Still….I can’t resist adding my two bits. The American Association of University Women is celebrating Women’s Equality Day by announcing the organization’s involvement with a campaign called “HERvotes.” AAUP notes:
Together, in a coalition called HERvotes, our movement will remind Congress and ordinary Americans that rights are not bestowed; they are seized by women willing to stand up and speak out. And when I use the word “seize,” I look to the primary definition – to lay claim to one’s rights, to assign ownership, to have legal possession.
We will be heard in social media and across the blogosphere, on opinion pages, and in letters to the editor. We will use Women’s Equality Day, an observance of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, as a rallying moment.
The writer is correct in saying that rights are seized, though, of course, sometimes you are fortunate to live in a country where your foremothers seized them for you. We have equality, and now what matters is how we use our equality.
But, yes, the suffragettes did seize rights for women. We owe them a debt of gratitude. I am glad I have the right to vote (and I always exercise it in a way that probably would appall my sisters in the AAUP!). There are a number of things that bother me about the HERvotes campaign. My guess is that it is going to be asking for ever larger government. It will almost certainly ignore contemporary developments that don’t fit in with the notion that we still lack equality. For example, women now outnumber men, often significantly, on many college campuses. What does this mean for the future of the country? Is there a war on boys? I bet Her isn’t interested in these questions.
The angry undertone in another problem-or maybe it’s not just an undertone. This sounds like something you’d say to people before sending them off to storm the Bastille. What, given the enormous success of women in this country, are they mad about?
Oh, and the other thing: the baby talk. HERvotes? Her is irritating me. This is how Her is making me feel.