Wendy Davis – she of the standing and the talking and the LAAAADY – announced to the National Press Club in Washington DC that she is considering a run for the position of governor of Texas.
Wendy is known to many as the LAAAADY who stood for an 11 hour filibuster to block the controversial SB5 law back in June. Despite that particular filibuster working and the proposed law – which closed down many of the state’s abortion clinics – did not go into effect, it was instead called into special committee a few weeks later by current governor Rick Perry, who is essentially a fucking Captain Planet villain come to life, where the bill passed and became law, shutting down many of the state’s full service women’s health clinics.
“He’s showed that he’s completely disconnected from the reality of what’s happening to women in the state of Texas today,” said Davis at the press lunch, attended by many of the nation’s top political journalists. She continued that while running for governor is a “huge task to take on,” she also added that she is “working very hard to decide what my next step will be.” Aren’t we all, Wendy? Aren’t we all?
If Texas could somehow elect a Democratic woman as governor, it would be the sign of a huge sea change in not only Texas as a state but politics as a whole. While Davis is popular amongst Texas’s LAAAADIES for speaking out for women’s rights, no Democrat has won the governorship of Texas since 1990, effectively making it the “ol’ Boo Radley house” of progressivism. Indeed, Texas is unique in it’s backwards, overtly-religious minded thinking, requiring that women who seek an abortion take a 3 hour class to learn the supposed consequences of said abortion. The LA Times put’s it succinctly in an article humorously and felicitously titled “Are Women Stupid?“:
Did you know that if you get pregnant, you can give the baby up for adoption?
Oh, you did?
Because in Texas, there’s a new proposal on the table, Senate Bill 42, that would require pregnant women to take an adoption education course before signing up for an abortion. This three-hour class would be in addition to other dubious tactics, recently signed into law, that restrict access and deter women from their constitutional right to an abortion. As if making the decision to get an abortion weren’t hard enough, traumatic even. Now a pregnant woman wishing to terminate her pregnancy has to waste more time getting schooled on the obvious. It’s insulting.
If Wendy does indeed run for the gubernatorial seat, she does face an uphill battle not just with the regressive political climate but also within the very media that attended and applauded her announcement during the luncheon: this is the same country that couldn’t stop talking about Hillary Clinton’s personal style during the 2008 campaign (she wears pantsuits! tee hee!), and Michelle Obama’s strong arms (thanks, TIME-fucking-magazine) for the last five years.
Will Wendy win? One can only hope so: we need more women in the political sphere. As of 2013, 1 in 5 in Congress is a woman, yet many women still aren’t seeing the changes necessary for women’s equality writ large in the US.
Perhaps Wendy can finally change that.
