A stitch and a vote in time
Over the past two years, those in power have fought any attempts to force them to be accountable to their constituents.
We are rapidly approaching what some are calling the most consequential election in our lifetimes. The midterm votes will not just help determine who and what we are as a country, but will also set the stage for who can make those decisions in the future.
With voter purges, mysteriously disappearing polling places, and insane gerrymandering threatening true democracy, we are in the middle of a much larger battle over who has a right to representation. Voter apathy and low turnout only aid those who relish stealing our rights.
I’m reminded of Susan Fenimore Cooper’s 1870 “Letter to the Christian Women of America.” Cooper (daughter of the novelist) manages to construct an argument that is eloquent, thoughtful, and well-reasoned while also being completely and utterly wrong. She argues that women should not be granted suffrage because the enfranchisement would pull them from “higher and more important duties.”
Cooper’s concern over women voting unwisely echoes the shouts of anxious men today, who see citizens exercising their rights to vote as a threat. Part of her claim is based on the assumption that men will vote for other men who are invested in the noble idea of governing instead of being driven to rule by their ego and greed. Today that notion feels laughably naïve: of course our government is almost entirely fueled by ego and greed, and what kind of snowflake would want anything else?
I like to temper my experience reading Cooper with Sara Willis Parton, who, writing under her pen name Fanny Fern for the New York Ledger in 1858, takes on the law that does not allow women to wear trousers or other masculine clothing. Her tone is light and humorous, but there is a fiercely sharp edge lurking out of sight as she tells her readers about how much she misses taking evening strolls with her husband when the weather is bad. On rainy nights, the required skirts and underclothing drag in the mud, making a walk, well, a drag.
In sudden inspiration and in the spirit of righteous law-breaking, Parton takes up her scissors, needle and thread, and an old suit of her husband’s and quickly fashions herself a manly suit fit for her smaller frame. She pulls a hat down over her hair and the collar up around her face, all the time trying not to catch her husband’s contagious laughter. The pair then set forth arm in arm to enjoy the wet and muddy streets of New York City, and contribute, no doubt, to the general decline in morals.
The approaching election forces us
to confront issues much more serious than women wearing trousers in public, but the symbolism remains the same, and Parton’s experience can teach us a lot. All too often, large groups —women, young people, people of color — find themselves locked out of public discourse, leaving them, in a civic sense, naked and vulnerable. Over the past two years, those in power have fought any attempts to force them to be accountable to their constituents. Our public servants have fallen so low that they feel perfectly comfortable saying that citizens who disagree with them should be ignored, ridiculed, or even deported.
It is time to grab our own scissors and stitch up a new suit that will let us march confidently and comfortably into the future. If we do not rise to the occasion and fight for what we believe in, we will find ourselves wearing the cast-off rags of a once great nation. We can be — we must be — better than that.