Demographics, WOO

I know! I am crazy with the numbers lately! This is because I have no idea how statistics are compiled, and therefore see in numbers a certain reassuring purity that rhetoric cannot provide. I mean, I'm sure they are just as skewed as everything else, but I would prefer it if you did not tell me about that. (Also, given the fact that I mistook Indiana for Illinois at one point on election night - I know, and I really do know where they are, I just saw a longish pointy contextless state from afar and I went for it - I am kind of thinking that "shapes" might not be my thing.) So, anyway, this article is very useful when you are thinking about the intersectionality of oppressions, and ladies in general, and the power of your vote.

Because it turns out that women's votes are totally important in choosing who the president will be! This is true all the time, but this year everybody seems to be like "wow, women, I guess they vote - maybe we should actively strive to represent their interests?" Speaking as someone who actually wrote a letter to Obama's campaign - yeah, I know, I'm so sure he read it - telling him that the Democratic party was historically the party which most honored the values of feminism, and that I felt more open and earnest statements about his commitment to women's issues could only help him to win, let me just say this: great, thanks for showing up, dudes. You're late.

So, men were split 49 to 49 percent between Obama and McCain, whereas women favored Obama over McCain by 53 to 47 percent, meaning that we were crucial to establishing his lead and facilitating his victory. (To the one or two of my lady friends who did not vote: I have another number for you. EIGHTY-EIGHT. It is the number of years that women have had a constitutional right to vote in this country. Also, SEVENTY. That is the number of years that women organized and protested - and were arrested, beaten, tortured and jailed - in order to secure that right. We've been full citizens of this country for less than a century. You cannot tell me you are tired of it already.) In a spectacularly duh-making statement, MSNBC points out that "women make up not only more of the general population, but also more of adult voters."

Here's the bummer: only forty-six percent of white women voted for Obama. My fellow white ladies, that is gross. What was it that did the rest of you in? Was it the fact that you might get to pay for your own rape kits? The promise that, if your pregnancy threatened your life, you would get to die rather than be forced to have a safe and legal abortion? Was it the thrilling prospect of having a misogynist wife-abuser - who does not think you deserve equal pay or insurance coverage for birth control - as your President? Or was it, you know, THE RACISM? Anyway, various reports seem to show that in communities of color, Obama was the leading candidate, and that women of color voted for Obama in even higher percentages than men of color did. So, thanks; the rest of us apparently need to get our shit together for 2012.

All of this is merely prologue, though, for now I must introduce to you the single most annoying voter demographic of all time: the Unmarried Woman.

Analysts expected Tuesday’s crowds to include record numbers of single women voters, who could help fuel a “marriage gap” that could be more significant than a gender gap, or the difference between how men and women support the same candidate. The Women’s Voices. Women Vote Action Fund registered 900,000 new unmarried female voters, according to Page Gardner, the advocacy agency’s president.

“There’s something about being on your own as a woman in this country that is politically significant,” Gardner said. "Unmarried women are at the razor's edge of the economic crisis."

Can we please, for the love of God, stop defining women as either "married" or "single"? I'm not single right now, nor am I married. "Single" and "married" are two ends of a spectrum, and there are about nine million kinds of relationships in between those two points, none of which is any more or less legitimate than any other. This concept works to make lesbian voters invisible, and it also delegitimizes domestic partnerships between men and women - not to mention the fact that I have never in my life heard people talk about the political differences between married and unmarried men. I think marriage is sweet and lovely and nice, and I think everybody should be able to have one, if that's what they want. However, I also think that we give unwarranted legitimacy to marriages as opposed to other partnerships, and that according women different values depending on whether or not they are married is heterosexist, sexist, and just plain obnoxious.

--- AMAZING TRUE STORY TIME ---

I once worked at a very small tea shop with two other waitresses. We worked our shifts alone. At that time, I had been living with a partner for about four years. On Mother's Day, the woman who was supposed to to work the five-hour morning shift called in "sick." She was married, with kids. I volunteered to cover her shift, even though it was my day off. An hour before that shift ended, I received a call from the tea shop's owner. The woman who was supposed to work the five-hour evening shift could not come in; her husband, whom she had known for a grand total of two years, had purchased theater tickets. I would need to work the evening shift, too.

"Is there any way you can require her to come in?" I asked. "I don't mind covering for [Married Lady #1] if she's sick, but this was my day off, and [my partner] and I had plans. I don't see why [Married Lady #2's] plans should be more important than mine, especially if she's announcing them at the last minute."

"You don't understand," my boss said. "They have to spend time with their husbands."

And that is the story of how I ended up working a ten-hour shift on my day off because I was not married.

--- THE END ---

So, yes: I think the "married/alone, SO ALONE" distinction, and the baggage that comes with it, has got to go away. However, I would also like to point something out:

At least 70 percent of unmarried women with and without children supported Obama, a margin of more than 2-to-1.

That's right, all you Democratic married ladies and men whose marital status is apparently irrelevant to your politics. PRAISE ME. For my people have brought you victory!

Vote Yes on Michelle Obama

Happy Voting Day! How was your experience? No matter how good it was, it can't compare to the experience that these folks had: 

That is because they have the Most Amazing Marriage of All Time. 

I will be honest with you: I've liked Barack Obama since 2004. After his speech at the DNC that year, I, like many people, believed that he had the capacity to be a major figure in American politics - maybe even President. He had good politics, a clear vision, and a capacity for energizing people that I thought would be extremely valuable. I did not love Barack Obama, however, until I found out that he was married to Michelle. 

I know, I know: for most of this country's history, the most prominent political position available to women has been that of Lady Who Is Married to the Dude In Charge, and that is lame. Still, I think you can tell a lot about a person's character by who that person chooses to partner with and how they relate to each other, and it would be foolish to pretend otherwise. You can definitely tell a lot about a man's relationship to feminism by watching how he relates to the women around him. John McCain called his wife a cunt; John McCain put air quotes around "women's health." These two incidents are not unrelated. As a feminist, I respected Barack Obama more, and was happier to support him, after learning about his relationship with Michelle, and with their daughters. 

Because Michelle Obama scares people. She's opinionated. She's accomplished. She's politically engaged. She's funny - and not in a broad, crowd-pleasing way, but in a deadpan, sarcastic way that can be cutting. She is most likely smarter than you. She's also a black woman, and she exists within a cultural context where all of these qualities are feared, demonized and suppressed in women (we're called "bitches") and black people (they're called "bitter" or "angry") and especially in black women (for God's sake, the Angela Davis thing). To fall in love with a woman like Michelle Obama, you have to fall in love, not only with these qualities, but with the sheer strength it must take for her to own them and wear them on her sleeve when every day, everywhere, everyone around her is pressuring her to shut up. You have to be one hell of a man to do that, or to earn that woman's love and respect. You have to be her equal. 

Which is a tough job, because look at how awesome this woman is: 

Of the Iowa State Fair's corn dogs and candied apples, obligingly gushed over by hopeful First Ladies every four years: "Stuff on a stick." Here's Obama, talking to me in her motorcade halfway between Sheboygan, Wisconsin and Green Bay about Obama Girl, the young woman who professed her crush on Obama's husband all over the internet: "That was a little weird, because, you know... I just assumed, you know, there's no way anybody's gonna hear about that. And one day Sasha comes home, and she's like, 'Daddy has a girlfriend. It's you, Mommy.' And it's, like, 'Oh, shhhhhhhhh -- yeah.'" Curse word averted, barely.

Traditionally, candidates' wives - including this year's alternate model, the hollow-eyed corpse of Betty Draper - speak of their husbands in reverential platitudes, rhapsodizing about their roles as perfectly submissive helpmeets to the Great Men and painting their relationships in sugary pastel tones that would ring false even if they hadn't been repeated a million times in other elections. Here is how Michelle Obama describes her position on her husband's campaign: 

Obama has been open about the value of her ability to speak to black audiences in cadences that reflect their experience, but she makes clear her distaste for the notion that she is a niche tool, wielded by her husband's campaign to woo black voters solely on the basis of their shared racial identity... "I mean, I've been to every early state," she told me... "I was 'deployed' to Iowa," she said, making air quotes with her fingers. "I was 'deployed' to New Hampshire."

So, Michelle Obama: invested in the campaign, committed to involving communities of color in the electoral process (her thesis, "Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community," was about being assimilated into an overwhelmingly white establishment through education while being aware that, within that environment, she was treated as "black first and a student second" due to continuing institutional racism - BECAUSE SHE'S BRILLIANT) and not about to let herself be described as a passive tool of her husband's agenda or a person who can be exploited by the Democratic party on the basis of her race. 

So much for the helpmeet theory! How about their relationship? Surely she's deferential to the mighty Barack Obama: 

"We would have this running debate throughout our relationship about whether marriage was necessary," Obama told me. "It was sort of a bone of contention, because I was, like, 'Look, buddy, I'm not one of these types who'll just hang out forever.' You know, that's just not who I am. He was, like" - she broke into a wishy-washy voice - "'Marriage, it doesn't mean anything, it's really how you feel.' And I was like, 'Yeah, right.'"

So, let's pause for a moment. You are in a relationship with a really great guy, who you really like, and you end up having one of those Commitment Discussions, in which he takes the inevitable "but it doesn't meeeean anything, it's just a piece of paaaaaper" route, pursued by dudes all over the world since approximately forever. You know damn well it means something, because if it didn't, he wouldn't be freaking out about it. Still, you really, really like this guy - you wouldn't be having this discussion if you didn't - and breaking up with him would hurt like hell, but then again, so would staying in a relationship where the other person always has one foot out the door. Then AGAIN, his argument is insanely well-framed and persuasive, because he is BARACK FREAKING OBAMA FOR GOD'S SAKE, and can you even imagine having a Relationship Discussion with Barack Obama? By the end of it, you'd be sobbing with joy and chanting, "yes! I! Can! Take! Out! The garbage! You! Are! Tired!" So you look this man in the eye, and you say, with resounding conviction, "whatever, dude - get on the train before it leaves the station." 

How awesome is that? Please rate your answers on a scale from "one" to "Michelle Obama." 

Anyway, we all know how that turned out: 

And: 

And: 

AUGHHH GOD THE BEAUTY IT BURNS MY EYESSSSSS. 

So, long story short, he's probably going to be President. He deserves it. He deserves her, too. Which is saying something.