Equal Rights

I visited STL this past weekend for a family graduation, so, of course my parents and I were talking about the protests at Washington State University's graduation. If you haven't kept up with the local news, students turned their backs while Phyllis Schlafly was awarded with an honorary doctorate by the University. My mother thought the protests were neat. I asserted that the students had every right to protest a symbolic reward for Schlafly, given her political career and views. My father's primary argument was, while Schlafly is effectively a Nazi (Godwin's Law), she has every right to pursue her anti-feminist, conservative goals. We all ended up in vehement agreement, as is typical, 'cause even when we disagree, dissent is patriotic.

During this conversation, my 11-year old niece (who was also visiting) seemed a bit confused and left out. To get her involved, I asked her if she knew whether there was an amendment in the Constitution that gave men and women equal rights. She said that she thought there was. I told her there was an amendment to make people equal regardless of race (the 14th Amendment grants equal protection under State law, enforceable by Federal law to reinforce the language that all men are created equal in the Declaration of Independence), and several amendments that gave everyone the right to vote (the 15th Amendment for racial suffrage, and the 19th Amendment for women's suffrage), but that there was no Amendment in the Constitution which stated that women are to be treated equally with men, under Federal law. Her response was a confused, "Huh."

I told her that, in the 70s, there was a proposal for the Equal Rights Amendment which declared all citizens to be equal regardless of sex, and gave the Federal government the right to enforce that equality in the States. Unfortunately, the ERA was never ratified and put into the Constitution, in part, due to efforts of conservatives like Schlafly. I told her that we grownups were talking about the Washington University protests because Schlafly had, among other things, opposed the ERA. I then listed some of her main concerns about the ERA, like women being drafted into the military and women and men both using the same public restrooms. I added that Schlafly was very vocal about how she thought women should all stay at home and raise families. At that, my niece made a rather terrible face. I then told her that, even a century ago, women couldn't vote or do much of anything without the permission of their fathers and husbands, and her face scrunched up even more. Her outrage was adorable.

I then reminded her that things are getting better all the time; people are still working to get the Equal Rights Amendment, or something like it, into the Constitution, and California just gave everyone the right to marry (homosexual and heterosexual). That made her smile.

My family's general philosophy is that everyone has the right to be, or do, whatever they want so long as their actions do not infringe upon the autonomy and well-being of others. My niece seems believe that everyone has the right to try to be a scientist, an artist, a Marine, or President, and the right to marry, regardless of color, gender or sexual orientation. I may be stretching. She's only 11, so it's hard to ascertain what she really believes or understands, but at the least, she finds it strange that one person would want to say someone was not as equal as everyone else, or that some people wouldn't be allowed to do certain things because of their color or sex. Of course, she communicates this by saying, "That's re-ea-allllllly weird," or, "Well, that's just plain silly."

What a good kiddo, we have.



This is what a feminist looks like.