Dear Senator Gillibrand,
I bought a ticket to see you speak about your new book and other topics, along with Gloria Steinem at 92Y in NYC. I had all intentions of attending and trying to record what I could and, of course, try to FTSU (confront you with the facts), but in the end I decided since I wasn’t allowed to record that I’d eat the ticket and cut my losses. But, oh, what I wanted to say!
I don’t buy the premise of your book, Off the Sidelines: Raise Your Voice, Change the World, that women are discouraged from going into politics and that we need more female politicians. You and your cohorts Gloria Steinem and Hillary Clinton—who wrote the foreword to your book—say we need a “movement” to get women and girls “off the sidelines” and into politics. However, despite what you say, there are no more barriers to women running for office than there are for men, and when they do run they frequently win. Didn’t you win your election to the Senate with a whopping 72% of the vote, a record?
Exactly why do we need more female politicians, anyway? Lest you be called a misogynist, our leaders, both male and female, cater to women’s needs above all others. The election of more actual vaginas into office couldn’t help women any more than already possible. Seems like the whole premise of your book is wrong, as well as your and Hillary’s “women at all costs” platform.
We’re hurtling headlong into a feminist matriarchy of gynocentric socialism where all matters are decided upon regarding their impact on girls and women. We’re already seeing it. Men have no reproductive rights—as women do—yet the focus is now on the right to free contraceptives for women while men will still have to just keep it in their pants.
With Hillary poised to become president, you use victimhood rhetoric to tell America we need more women in office to help women, hoping to someday ride that feminist wave to the White House yourself. You talk about a “sticky floor” that supposedly keeps many women in low-paying jobs. Well, guess what, men also know what it’s like to be stuck in low-paying jobs, and amazingly, they hate it too! The reality is that this “movement” to help women is just pushing more female-friendly programs and entitlements that men don’t get, and it’s not a matter of “women’s voices not being heard.” I hear that you and a group of 20 female senators get together and, I guess, “network” for women even further. So much for diversity.
With programs like VAWA, HeForShe, It’s On Us, and Emily’s List, how can you say that women’s interests aren’t being addressed? Supposed women’s issues like affordable daycare and paid family medical leave are really people’s issues that both men and women legislate and vote on. Mainstream feminists really don’t have any more issues to be won (equal pay is not an issue).
If you really wanted to help women run for office in more numbers (isn’t it embarrassing having an MHRA school you this way?):
- tell Gloria Steinem, NOW, and all the other mainstream feminist groups to stop opposing shared parenting laws so women would be less responsible for children and have more time for a political career, and
- tell women to ditch the hypergamy and encourage them to get a “househusband,” take care of him and the children, and have the “dutiful wife” feminists joke they wish they had.
There was great publicity about the stories you told of being called “porky” and “chubby” by unnamed colleagues in the Senate. I suspect they’re unnamed so you get victimhood status without fear of retaliation all without any proof. Not that it’s not believable, actually I think it happened as you said, after all there are knuckleheads in all walks of life, but what didn’t happen was you complaining about it and making a ruckus then and there. You know why you didn’t complain? Because as an often foul-mouthed high-pressure attorney and senator, you obviously brushed it off and moved on, yet now you expect us to believe you were so thin-skinned that you didn’t just brush it off and move on AS YOU DID! Foul-mouthed and thin-skinned doesn’t jibe.
Did you know that your friend Gloria Steinem, honorary chair of the Democratic Socialists of America, thinks capitalism must be ended, yet has no problem selling books and charging for lectures?
From the DSA web site:
Democratic Socialists believe that both the economy and society should be run democratically to meet human needs, not to make profits for a few.
Will Gloria donate all the profits from her books to charity?
(Crickets)
As we are unlikely to see an immediate end to capitalism tomorrow, DSA fights for reforms today that will weaken the power of corporations and increase the power of working people.
How can Gloria weaken corporations when she writes books and makes money for them?
Sorry I missed a gathering of power-hungry hypocrites cheered on by brainwashed and bigoted people. I had to write this letter to make this known to you and the world, and to redeem myself for giving you any money at all.
Sincerely,
Gary Costanza
P.S. The Secret is bullshit.
Note: Image from Wikimedia Commons. –DE
