We saw a thought-provoking piece by Ana Marie Cox that, rather than the usual misogynist Republican flapdoodle we cite in this space, we thought we should highlight. In it, Cox argues that the next front in the "war on women" must be to look beyond the Limbaughs and Akins to the conservative men (and women) who hear that term and disassociate from it based on their personal experiences:
I don’t think there’s any amount of data that can dissuade those who reject “the war on women” based on their positive personal relationships with women. It is actually a scientific fact that scientific facts carry little weight against life experience.
So we have to confront the semi-conscientious objectors to of the war on women. We have to ask them to expand their personal experience. We have to make further personal experience available to them. We have to ask them to think not about their own feelings about the women they already know, but to look more closely at the lives of the women all around them. What are the struggles of the woman who teaches your kids, who does your accounting, who makes your espresso, who delivers your mail, who rings up your groceries?Thinking beyond their own experiences would be a challenge for this subset of the population because it would require empathizing with others. Not impossible, but a challenge. (Caveat: We don't believe that progressives have a monopoly on compassion or the ability to empathize with others, because they don't. But read on.) Last year, Sean McElwee had an article on the "empathy gap," wherein he identifies a certain Republican saint's views on poverty and the role of government:
Most social phenomenons can't be pegged to a single event. But the Republican Party's shift from empathy to disgust and from viewing government as a force for good to a necessary evil, although developing for a long time, is aptly summarized in two lines from Ronald Reagan's "A Time for Choosing" speech. The great orator said, "Each year the need grows greater; the program grows greater. We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry each night. Well that was probably true. They were all on a diet. But now we're told that 9.3 million families in this country are poverty-stricken on the basis of earning less than 3,000 dollars a year." (our emphasis)That's the past 50 years of generic, right-wing/ Randian/ plutocrat id pretty neatly wrapped up. That's the challenge in bringing the issues negatively impacting women "home" to those in this part of the political spectrum. It has to change one mind at a time. But, if it changes any minds, it's worth the effort.
