“Keep our nation on the track/one step forward two steps back!”
( Ladies Against Women slogan )
I love Stephen Colbert’s work wherein he used his conservative commentator alter ego ( a “well-intentioned, poorly informed, high-status idiot”) to lampoon conservative politics. However, Colbert was no pioneer in that strategy. Almost three decades before The Colbert Report, The Plutonium Players, a feminist guerilla theatre troupe, used satire to illuminate and mock the anti-feminist politics of Reagan-era conservatives. [1]
Do any of my older (ahem) readers remember the Bay Area comedy group, Ladies Against Women (LAW)? I attended several of their rallies and performances during LAW’s heyday in the 1980s. The LAW (an offshoot of The Plutonium Players) riffed on the sexist, anti-gay and anti-civil rights values espoused by the Right Wing, holding “Evenings of Consciousness-Lowering” events, which included cooking demonstrations (to encourage Ladies to make Twinkies ® from scratch), exercise routines to help Ladies look and feel helpless, [2] lessons on how Ladies could reduce stress via apathy, presentations on the insidious truth behind the ERA ( “the Equal *Restrooms* Amendment” ), and a wimp test for males in the audience.
The Plutonium Players gained notoriety for their Reagan For Shah campaign, and for showing up dressed as their LAW characters at airports and political rallies, where they greeted political VIPs – from POTUS Reagan to anti-feminist campaigner Phyllis Schlafly ( who also was parodied by LAW as the character, Phyllis LeShaft ), to televangelist Jerry Falwell, et al – holding posters which read, “Ban Books Not Bombs”, Poverty Is So Tasteless,” “Born To Clean,” “Ban the Poor, ” “Push Us Back, Push Us Back, Waaaay Back.”
Two of the LAW Ladies, “Virginia Cholesterol” and “Mrs. T. “Bill” Banks,” demonstrating at the Democratic National Convention, Atlanta, Georgia, 1988 (Photo by Atlanta Journal-Constitution).
LAW worked tirelessly to “keep women safe from the 20th century,” as evidenced by excerpts from their Ladies Against Women’s manifesto Ladyfesto:
We Truly Tasteful Ladies Do Hereby Demand Request:
Repeal the Ladies’ vote. It is suffering and not suffrage that keeps us up on our pedestals. And if God hadn’t wanted us up on pedestals, He wouldn’t have made us shorter than our husbands.
Abolish the environment. It takes up too much space,
and is almost impossible to keep clean!
Free Ladies from wage slavery. The 70-odd cents we earn for every manly dollar
is entirely too much. It is unladylike to accept money for your work.
Maintain illiteracy as a high school graduation requirement. An uninformed populace
is an obedient populace, and a self-censoring one, too. After all, ignorance is a virtue: what you can’t read, can’t hurt you!
Procreation, not recreation. Where did so many gals get the idea that s_x is supposed
to be f_n? True ladies, it’s time to close your eyes and do your duty!
LAW’s perspective is sorely needed in these times (and, sadly, sorely applicable as to the targets of their satire). On a related note….
* * *
Department Of You Can’t Make Up This Shit
I refer to the POTUS and his festering turd allies/advisors minions wanting to offer a $5000 bait bribe Baby bonus offer to entice women (read: young white women) to be fruitful and multiply.
Speaking as someone who was once a young white woman, had I been in my mid-20s and such an offer was made to me by anyone connected with a governmental agency, the only enticement it would have provided would have been to get moiself to the nearest medical facility and lie about my age/medical condition to fit the criteria for having a hysterectomy.
I’m not the only woman of a certain age who had that gut response. For one example, read WaPo opinion columnist Kathleen Parker’s take on the subject. She starts out expressing similar sentiments (pokes fun at the baby bonus). However, in a refreshing sidenote on the demographic concern re declining birthrates in the “developed world,” Parker goes on to express something which is not often mentioned when the talk turns to why women choose to have or not have children. Parker, who like moiself chose to become a mother later in life, [3] discovered something for herself when she did so – something which isn’t mentioned as much as it might be, but which is described by a word that should be used more often in conjunction with the experience of voluntary parenthood:
JOY.
Circa 20 years ago, son K and daughter Belle, bringing moiself much delight in their interpretation of their parents’ request to pose for “A nice picture we can send to your grandparents for Christmas…”
* * *
Department Of, As Opposed To Live Shorter, Worser?
Moiself was bemused to hear the title of a recent Clear + Vivid Podcast: Eric Topol: Live Longer, Better. I got past that and was treated to yet another thought-provoking C+V dialog between host Alan Alda and an interesting, articulate and intelligent guest.
Eric Topol is an American is an American doctor (cardiology), scientist, professor of Molecular Medicine and the founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute. Their discussion revolved around the captivating concept of how can you live, what can you do, to increase your odds of being one of the wellderly and not one of the illderly (i.e., the elderly set by chronic conditions and diseases).
“While promises of extending the human lifespan to 125 and beyond are premature, recent breakthroughs in the early detection of killer diseases of the major organs and brain offer a healthier old age – especially when paired with behavioral changes that Dr Topol calls Lifestyle+ .”
( episode summary, Clear + Vivid Podcast: Eric Topol: Live Longer, Better. )
Episode content poiler alert: you are not a prisoner of your genes:
Alda:
“A lot of people live by the joke, ‘If you want to live a long time, choose old parents.’ How much of healthy, long living is attributed to the genome and how much to things like nutrition and exercise?”
Topol:
“Yeah, and this is I think one of the most important things we’ve learned, and all the evidence backs it up: The genes are *far less* important than we had suspected….”
Topol notes that far more important factors are not just the familiar pair, diet-and-exercise, but “all these other lifestyle factors,” including
* quality (and quantity) of sleep
* physical activity (“absolutely vital”)
* environmental exposures (air pollution; microplastics)
* social interactions/loneliness/isolation [4]
* Nature – as in, how much time do you spend in nature/outdoors
The one (and in some cases, seeminngly the only) thing we as humans have in common is that unless we die RIGHT NOW we are going to continue to age. Moiself sez it’s a two-hamster-thumbs-up subject, so check it out.
* * *
Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week [5]
“People who are most strongly attached to a belief in an afterlife are more likely to try to delay death when it’s clearly imminent. That doesn’t make any logical sense.
If people believe in a blissful afterlife, then logically, you’d think they’d accept their death gracefully, and would even welcome it. But it makes perfect sense when you think of religion, not as a way of genuinely coping with the fear of death, but as a way of putting it on the back burner.”
( Greta Christina, American author and activist, from her book,
Comforting Thoughts About Death That Have Nothing to Do with God )
* * *
May you consider composing your own Ladyfesto list;
May never be on the receiving end of a bribery to reproduce;
May you aim to be one of the wellderly;
…and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
* * *
[1] Ronald Reagan supported the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) when he was governor of California, and even offered to help women’s groups achieve its ratification. Then when he ran for POTUS he withdrew his support for the ERA.
[2] And thus increase their appeal to manly men.
[3] In obstetrical terms, that is. ( You are labeled “advanced maternal age” when you are pregnant at age 35 or older). It’s not like we waited until we were 52 and said, “Hey, might be time to have kids!”
[4] Isn’t it time for another footnote?
[5] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists. No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.” Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org
