The Case Against Playing The Gender Card

I am the oldest of a family of four daughters, raised in Lansing, Michigan. Born between 1952 - 1958 before the sexual revolution and the pill we were quite aware of the difference of being a girl and being a boy. My mother, Beatrice Houston, was very feminine; she wore sequined lounging outfits around the house, a lot of a smelly perfume called “Ambush,” and frilly blouses matched with pastel suits. She was also an Industrial Engineer. Graduating from GM Institute she was the first African-American female Engineer at GM’s Oldsmobile. This was in 1967 before the bra burning and ERA.

There were no laws for women, or movements yet to make things easier for her. The men played rough and she had to keep up on two counts; one she was black so she had to be smarter; two, she was female so she had to be stronger. She had to be able to take it and not say anything.

My mother had four daugthers to raise in the mist of all this. She got up every morning at 4:00 am. She made breakfast for us and I’m not talking cereal, I'm talking grits, eggs and bacon. Then she prepared that night’s supper and left instructions for me. Then she quietly went upstairs got dressed and went off to a day of being disrespected. Cat calls by the black men on the factory floor who saw her as theirs,’ and being underutilized by the white men who didn’t see what she had to offer. She never complained about sexism, in 1967 there was no term for what she was going through. If the guys hit hard, she hit hard back. When she retired 25 years later, they all showed up to pay their respects.

I tell my mother’s story because no one else will. Hers is a small story and it happened in a small town. She’s not Hillary Clinton running for president, or Sara Palin running for Vice President. She didn’t have surrogates to go out and speak on her behalf or defend her. She had to kick ass on her own. She couldn’t hide behind being a girl.

Hillary Clinton and Sara Palin have stepped on the world stage. They want to be there, they asked for it and they got it. They understood that the men in this game play for high stakes; power, fame, glory it’s raw and vicious some don’t survive. They slaughter each other and keep pushing forward, if your get in their way you get clubbed to the ground.

This is the world that Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin have willingly stepped into. They weren’t pushed into it, they didn’t accidentally wonder into a khaotic party or take a wrong turn, they’re there because they want to be there. Clinton and Palin want all of the same things the men want; fame, power, and glory. The question is are they willing to fight for it.

Politics is still a blood sport if you’re gonna play you’ll have to play by the one and only rule; destroy or be destroyed. You can’t cry about it, run from it, or hide in anyway behind being a woman. You got to get in there and fight.

Both know the game is played rough, for them to cry sexism is disingenuous. I don’t like women who hit hard, use their nails to scratch a man’s eyes out then run crying if the men hit back. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think men should go around hitting women, but if a woman hits a man she should expect to be hit back. Clinton and Palin like to throw punches then cry sexism if roughed up. Pat Buchanan once said to Barack Obama, "this is the NFL, the big league, if you want to play up here you'd better be on your game.

I have two sons who when young played rocket football. One year the quarterback was a girl. She was really good, for this reason the other team was constantly trying to take her out. Her team did what they could to defend her, but sometimes she got knocked down. They didn’t show any mercy. She would get back up every time and go back to the line of scrimmage and it was her ability to scramble and break through the line and run down the field to a touchdown that impressed everyone. At 12 years old had she had a lot more courage and spunk the either Clinton or Palin.