Men on the Left Vs Women on the Right
There's a reason why I don't belong to a political party: Men.
As I've mentioned before, when I worked at the NDP at Queen's Park, women in other Parties were routinely targeted in Question Period for being women, the reason being, of course (there's always a reason, even when there isn't) that women should be New Democrats. Therefore, women who weren't, made themselves targets of men in the NDP by choosing the wrong politics.
Women at the NDP didn't much care for this attitude, of course, but, being women in politics, they deferred to the judgment of the male powers that be and looked the other way. Yes Virginia, women on the left, like women on the right (and the middle left and right) are welcome but really only so's your party looks less sexist than the other guy's party. It looks good to have a woman sitting down front while the leader of the Party - a man, of course - talks about women's rights and all his Party plans to do for women. Win/win? Except that politics is a male playground because political women care about doing the job and political men care about doing the politics of the job - which is what politics is really all about. It's not about making the world a better place for women, it's about winning. And then winning again.
This sentiment is shared by the Liberal and Conservatives Parties, too, although there's less targeting of women across the floor in the NDP because men in the Liberal and Conservative Parties have to pretend - harder - that they're all about power for the benefit of women's rights - not just to have power - because they actually have power and it would be unseemly to attack women in a Party that never will. This is all because men in politics believe they know what's best for women. Sincerely. They don't know what's best for women, of course - or they'd leave politics to women and stay home and look after their kids. But they really and truly believe that they do as long as their lips are moving and they're speaking about women's rights.
Anyway, I make it a policy to leave off gender when I disagree with the politics of other women because men don't - and I'm a woman. Men of all politics attack political women for being women because they simply can't believe that a woman doesn't trust him to know what's best for her. And because it's fun and easy to do and women set themselves up as great targets by taking politics seriously.
Oh, and by being cows, harridans, hags, skanks, fat, skinny, ugly...
