I got an email from an Ohio reader who has read my blathering for a long time, suggesting I go back to working on and writing about issues like education or child care or voting rights, and leave off the (very real and substantive) split in the Democratic Party on foreign policy, which is controversial and makes some people (probably him) mad. Basically, “I liked it when you did that and I don’t like thinking about this other thing you care about, so go back into the box I put you in”. I like this person (well, less so now) and so I tried to explain how that reads to me in a private response, and now I’m explaining the same thing here.
Women in the Democratic Party (or the Left – DSA Leftists are just as bad) are not responsible for holding up Party unity. We’re not the busy worker bees watching the group weather and calming squalls while the menfolk discuss The Big Thorny Issues. We’re not obligated to do unpaid work on or write about whatever consensus or conventional Dems think is an acceptable, practical issue “we can all agree on”. We can change our opinions and pursue our own interests, and people can get mad about it and we can continue anyway.
It’s important for people to recognize because this expectation comes out of how women are socialized, and also, frankly, out of how women are still treated in the Democratic Party. We’re the cooperative community builders. We don’t make waves, we build bridges! Except sometimes we don’t want to, that feels like an unfair burden that men don’t carry and really constraining. Here’s the thing – maybe we’re exploring something new only because of our own interest, not its value to the Democratic Party or the collective or your particular cycle-driven political project..
Women do most of the scut work in this Party. I would suggest just trying to be aware whether insisting they continue to do exclusively that work is sexist, because I think it is.
