Speaking of TX - did you folks read this piece? ~ The Texas Legislature’s Sexist Little Secret
Tales from "the last of the good ol' boys clubs."
In January, I returned to my home state to cover the Texas Legislature. After a seven-year absence, I was eager to spend the next 140 days writing for this magazine about the theatrics—and occasional clownery—of the Legislature’s 2013 regular session. I had no idea what I was getting into.
It didn’t take me long to realize that as a woman, and especially a young woman, I’d be treated differently than my male colleagues. Within weeks, I’d already heard a few horrifying stories. Like the time a former Observer staffer, on her first day in the Capitol, was invited by a state senator back to his office for personal “tutoring.” Or, last session, when Rep. Mike “Tuffy” Hamilton interrupted Marisa Marquez during a House floor debate to ask if her breasts were real or fake.
Thankfully I never experienced anything so sexually explicit. Instead, I encountered a string of subtle but demeaning comments. One of the first interviews I conducted for the Observer, in February, was with a male senator about an anti-abortion bill. I was asking questions about whether the bill would reduce access to abortion. At the end of the interview, as soon as I turned off my recorder, he said, “How old are you, sweetheart? You look so young.”
Another day, near the end of the regular session, I was at the Capitol (doing interviews for this story, coincidentally) when a House page stopped me on my way out of the chamber. “I’ve never seen you in here before,” he said. “Who do you work for?” I answered the question, assuming that he wanted to see my press badge. “Well, uh, this may seem forward,” he stammered, “but I’m not sure if I’ll ever see you again—could I maybe take you out to lunch or dinner some time?” He looked about 16, red-faced and innocent. I politely declined. When I walked over to the Senate chamber, a staffer stopped me. “Wow,” he said. “You look really beautiful today.” My face turned red. I thanked him and walked to a seat at the press table. It was the third time that day the staffer had mentioned my appearance, and I was beginning to feel that what I looked like mattered more than my work—at least to the men in the building. At a certain point, after enough of these run-ins—which included male staffers from both chambers, some of whom I knew to be married, hitting on me, making comments about my physical appearance, touching my arm—it finally occurred to me that, when I was at work, I was often fending off advances like I was in a bar.
Read the whole thing here:
http://www.texasobserver.org/the-texas-legislatures-sexist-little-secret/
= new reply since forum marked as read
Last edited Sun Aug 4, 2013, 03:42 PM - Edit history (1)
I'm glad you refrained from name-calling or labeling me, but for you to say that my comments about this writer were based on gender is quite enough.
I don't expect you or anybody on a board as large as this to know what everybody stands for, and I don't have to prove myself or my personal history to you. I'll just leave it at this, that I've said multiple times (and don't expect anybody to note it or care), that NO member group of the Dem coalition gets a get-out-of-jail gold card, that if somebody who is a member of whatever group -- race, ethnic, gender, or whatever --- says something needing criticism or does something criminal, there is NO free pass. That is what equality is about.
I frequently rail against media/journalists for not knowing enough or investigating enough or being lazy. By the way, my original comments were not nearly so harsh as I am NOW sounding. If this person, or you, didn't know that Texas is ruled by a 6% of the population with its Wingnut minority, and that sexism is a major tenet of wingnutism, I don't know what to say.
I haven't re-read this thread but remember that at least one other poster commented that this writer needed to have read some Molly IVINS.
Wow back at you. Oh, and:
