I was a Carter Democrat. I’ve been thinking a lot about this the last few days. I come from the Irish Catholic tribe except my mother didn’t want my little brother and I to go to Catholic schools like she did. She was a pretty fierce feminist, and a career woman in the era we were born. Fashion. She divorced our fathers, so by the time that we were oh, say 13 — we had no fathers. Really.
I guess that was the 70’s. Everything that had looked like this little video, kind of wasn’t in my family. This video is much more like my grandmother who was born in 1903. Anyway — the particular year this video was made America looked like this.
If’ that is what California looked like in 1962, we can assume that a lot of America looked liked that, or assumed that life would be that. Maybe so for the top end of the Baby Boom women. What else was going on that year? The Civil Rights era. There are lots of videos in the web about that.
I’ve been giving thought to two very different women this political season in America. Hillary Clinton and Ann Romney.
They are both older than me by a bunch of years. Their era is different than mine was. Their lives very different. Really.
The first thing I remember about anything political was holding my mother’s hand when JFK was assassinated. I was just a little girl. In fact? My generation of kids are depicted very well in that show Mad Men. Those are our mothers and fathers.
My grandparents were staunch Republicans, very much like the Reagans. Neither of them ever really worked. Their fathers were architects and landlords in Chicago. In fact, part of the downtown is named for them. In 1929, after the crash, a whole branch of the family left for California. So, that is where I can start.
1973? That was Roe v. Wade, and I was just a young teen.
The 60’s had changed everything for women. My mother was born in 1927, so she was 30 in 1957. My younger brother and I date from that era of the tail end Baby Boom. One of my first memories is holding her hand while she wept for JFK. She did that again for MLK.
So what happened to my generation of women? The kind that went to college to go to college? Not to meet husbands.
That was 1980. I’ll be telling you a tale of Roe and Woe, which is why you see the Statue of Liberty weeping. In this era of Draconian politicians who want to strip women of all the rights they had fought for since the era of Suffrage in America…
What was the story of our gen — the Carter Democrats of the 1980’s?
I do not know a single woman who didn’t have to have an abortion. You know why? The men didn’t want the babies. And in that era to be an unwed mother was unthinkable for many women.
It’s clear to me that only Hillary Clinton seems to have been clear on Women’s Rights. Of course she knew women’s history, didn’t she?
So why is this book I’m thinking of called “F*cked.”
Well?
That’s what happened. Women meant nothing to men in the era post Roe.
Isn’t that sad?
We’ll be unpacking that, and we’ll be trying not to cry too hard about the next generation of girls. Election 2012.
Patriarchy hasn’t changed one bit.
Has it?
VALENTINE BONNAIRE - WRITER 