Speaking in Virginia, Ohio Governor and Republican Presidential aspirant John Kasich reassured the gathered crowd that a lack of support has never deterred him from seeking office. He referenced an early campaign in his career when "I didn’t have anybody for me. We just got an army of people who —and many women who left their kitchens to go out and go door to door and put yard signs up.”
You guys. I’m so tired.
It’s 2016. Even if we try to rationalize this anecdote as a throwback to 1978 when Kasich was first running for statewide office, it’s still 2016 when he’s telling this story. Women leaving kitchens isn’t some sort of powerful patriotic image. We put that shit to bed when Rosie the Riveter showed up on the scene, decades before Governor Kasich was even considering elective office. And hell, long before white lady Rosie took up her rivet gun, Black women and other women of color were working outside their homes. Women work. Women have always worked, especially women of color. MOREOVER, women have always been sentient beings with beliefs and political positions. If there was ever a time when women weren’t an informed and critical voting bloq it was because men denied us that right for centuries. Since 1920, after suffragists spent 40 years pushing for the women’s right to vote, women have been voting their asses off.
Images such as “women leaving their kitchens” to put up yard signs for some doughy-faced white dude who’s going to spend the next 40 years dismantling their access to reproductive health services need to die in a fire.
I mean really, guys SHUT THE FUCK UP. Don’t talk about us like we’re a novelty in the electorate, like it’s cute that we go to the polls. We are HALF OF THE POPULATION OF AMERICA. Hell, a woman currently has poll numbers in the presidential race that Governor Kasich can only dream about. WOMEN MATTER. Politicians can’t win without women.
Treat us with some goddam respect.
