Actually, the War on (Other) Women rages on

Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

Pamela Powers Hannley, my colleague over at Blog for Arizona, took the Arizona Daily Star to task for running a column by Slate’s Hanna Rosin advising Democrats to back off on the War on Women rhetoric. The article itself is the usual eyeroll-inducing concern trolling that Rosin, who describes herself as liberal and feminist, is a high practitioner of on the internet. Pamela is right to note that the choice to run Rosin’s column is an example of the Star caving to crank letter writers demanding more wingnut-friendly content.

But the Star wasn’t the only publication showing Rosin, who did write a controversial book called The End of Men* but is still little known outside of online political junkie circles, love for that column. Lots of papers ran it and it’s starting to appear that a general consensus is forming among the mainstream media folks that this War on Women thing is over now that the GOP got its sensitivity training and we all need to move on and focus on things that they care about. Not so fast. Pamela links to an article she wrote back in August about why the Equal Rights Amendment is as important as it has ever been. There has been no relenting on the attacks on women by the right, despite the much ballyhooed “rebranding” of the GOP.

It’s easy for female Republican Senate candidate Terry Lynn Land (MI) to poke fun at the War on Women as she does in this ad because she is not a target of it. The war is being waged against poor, minority, and otherwise marginalized women. Land is happy to take part in the effort to deprive other women of reproductive and voting rights and health care and a safety net. I’m not sure why it’s confusing to someone like Hanna Rosin that women can be cruel to other women, often serving as the enforcers of discriminatory gender norms. But Democrats should definitely not take her advice, for both electoral and policy reasons. This is no time for unilaterally disarming in the War on Women because so many women in this country have no one but Democrats looking out for them.

*Interesting that someone who wrote a book with such an inflammatory title and premise is lecturing others about being hyperbolic.