Romney’s Empty Binder
Carmon does a good job of putting Romney’s BINDERS FULL OF WOMEN in the proper context. On the one hand, the binders remark came in the context of Romney running out the clock because his offer to American women facing ongoing employment discrimination is nothing. (His offer to women more generally is to make things much worse.) It’s worth noting as well that when Romney repeatedly asserts that the job of regulators is not to regulate, that includes civil rights laws. On the other hand, Obama was surprisingly good, making it clear that reproductive freedom is also an issue of economic equality — a truth all too rarely heard from elite male political leaders.
And Matt is also correct that Romney’s utter indifference to discrimination against women is a logical outgrowth of his reactionary conception of the role of women in society more generally:
I am favorably disposed toward both full employment and flexible workplace scheduling. But what Romney is saying here is that due to their family responsibilities women are burdened with an inherent disadvantage in the labor market. In conditions of full employment, firms do become desperate for workers and are willing to do things they won’t do in weak labor market. High-margin businesses, for example, hand out raises to competent experienced workers. And firms of all kinds take risks on people they wouldn’t otherwise go for—those who lack formal credentials, those who might have had legal problems in the past, smart people who seem to lack experience, and so forth. Romney’s suggestion is that a woman—at least a woman with a family—is basically like a high school dropout with a felony conviction in his background. A marginally employable worker who’ll get a job if and only if the labor market is super-tight. After all, everyone knows mom needs to be home at 5:00 to start cooking dinner.
But maybe dad should cook dinner!
This reflects a persistent problem for conservatives, who seem to think that pay inequities may reflect discrimination, or they may reflect the fact that women have greater domestic responsibilities. But women being assumed to have more domestic responsibilities is sexism!
What was the point of Mitt waffling on Lily Ledbetter for many months if he wasn’t going to pretend to support it now? He forgot to lie!
“He forgot to lie!”
He did. But I think he also got taken aback by the question. Between Ledbetter and immigration, even the hired flacks weren’t prepared (http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/10/romney-surrogates-dance-around-equal-pay-immigration-position.php?ref=fpb). My guess would be that they didn’t expect either to really come up because, really, who cares about women and minorities?
I think they also didn’t prepare for the difference between Romney and Bush. Unless they really believed that problem that people had with Bush was lack of free trade deals in Latin America.
A woman’s place is in a binder not at the workplace.
Barefoot, pregnant, and cooking in the binder, according to Romney.
Not. Barefoot. Ahorse.
Frigging iOS. “Not barefoot”, not “Not. Barefoot.”.
I can’t hear “binders” with relationship to “women” without thinking about the bra scene from the 1961 Hayley Mills vehicle “The Trouble With Angels”.
Going to be honest, that looks a lot weirder written down than I thought it would…
Care to explain it a bit so it doesn’t look quite as weird in context?
Stop digging.
The nun in charge of the shopping trip calls them “binders”. Lols ensue.
Partial scene:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-6dKFlBdgM
I know a lot of drag kings, so the binder jokes I was hearing after the debate were probably different than the ones other people were hearing.
Methinks the Romney doth protest, too much. The obvious pander will auger well with the women who will vote for him, even off the Compound.
Well, there’s auger and then there’s augur. Speaking from my binder, I’m thinking Romney would auger me really, really well — which is not anything I’m looking forward to.
i doubt mitt’s “augured” in quite some time, since they only have five children, and they only “auger” for procreative purposes. could explain why ann’s so bitter.
I have to say, even before this debate, the whole idea of ‘flex time’ as being the principal concern of women in the workplace has always irritated me to no end. I remember back in my early days of being a lawyer at a big NYC firm, EVERY women’s committee meeting was consumed with discussions of flex time and part time and all the ways the firm was supposed to accomodate mothers, and almost no discussion of the disproportionate numbers of men who seemed to make partner over equally or better qualified women whether or not those women even had children.
as a childfree by choice person, who has dedicated herself to her career, to hear about clearly less qualified who men made partner while I got laid off during the economic crisis was perhaps the most frustrating moment of my life – and for the friend who informed me of this promotion, who ranted himself about how i was clearly a better attorney (of course, my former firm has since gone spectacularly bankrupt, so…good for me?).
Dewey, LeBouf?
That was a spectacular flameout!
That’s the one!
some (small) solace to be taken from that.
i learned (the hard way, i’m afraid) that just being really, really good at what you do is no guarantee of success, great billable hours notwithstanding. being able to utterly destroy your opponent apparently means nothing, if you don’t play golf with the right people. since it is my form conviction, that unless there is a windmill in front of at least one hole, it isn’t real golf, you can readily see where this led me.
and, “character building” is wildly overrated.
Someone should ask Mitt if Jane Swift was in that binder.
The worst part of Mitt’s answer wasn’t even the binder thing. It was this. His very narrow view of the world was coming out there.
So, Mittens, womens issues first came to your attention in 2003?
Was that right before, or right after, you discovered that Lucky Lindy made it?
Apparently that was when he first became aware of it – after all, there were apparently no women in senior positions at Bain.
Mind you, he afterwards ceased being aware of it, and actually managed to lower representation of women in executive positions as governor.
Shotgun weddings will solve the gun violence problem.
Restricting womens work hours so they can get home in time to start their second shift cooking and cleaning will solve the pay equity problem.
Growing small businesses so vulture capitalists like Mitt can eat them will grow the economy.
Criminy!
They’re assault weapon weddings in Mitt’s America.
More evidence of the importance of regulation to deal with structural inequalities that some take as “natural” but are in fact choices society or some members of societies make and so forth.
We not supposed to talk about it, but I don’t think you can find a more patriarchal religion than the LDS.
I’d argue that you can’t. I’d argue that the LDS church reverses one of Judaism’s major innovations, and re-sacralizes heterosexual procreation in a way that no major religion has none for 4,000 years or so. Remember, there is not just Heavenly Father, but also one or more Heavenly Mothers, and if we want to reach the Celestial Kingdom, we need to get down and funky like they did – after, of course, being sealed for all Time and Eternity in a Temple ceremony that Mittens won’t talk about – and make a whole lotta babies.
People who don’t breed in Temple-approved ways get a lesser Heaven.
You mean they don’t just get transfered to another parish?
No, the transfer is often something rather more permanent.
Sounds pretty draconian, but I think that the RCC in most of its incarnations over the past several centuries, including the present one, comes in a close second. Orthodox Judaism, especially the Hassidic branch, is also in the running.
Not even close, in either case. The theology of sex and the family in the LDS church really is an elaborate departure.
If I recall, you do anthro of religion, so you have probably read Berger’s Sacred Canopy. There is a lot in there (chapter 3, from long-ago memory) about how Judaism was a radical break from other Mesopotamian religions. I think Eliade touched on this in The Sacred and The Profane as well, but that book is even further down my memory hole.
In any event, LDS theology really does undo the Judaic innovations Berger describes. It re-institutes the microcosm/macrocosm, such that we are to re-enact rituals first performed by Elohim in the PreExistence, and gender relations take on the sub specie eternis nature they had prior to Judaic religion.
It is so deep in the LDS teachings and practices, right?
It seems that LDS men and women elect to remain segregated at social gatherings as well as the obvious Man is the Lord of the House.
No matter what a Mormon female say about how “women are revered”, I just recall that *only* the male can cease the celestial marriage, not the female.
And, a man of Romney’s age, who was in his 30s before blacks were allowed to hold the priesthood, how can any (thinking) female think that a man of his ilk cares about women and thinks of them as equals?
((Mumbles something about Romney kind of callously saying he wouldn’t even be watching the Olympic event that his wife’s horse was competing in))
It seems that LDS men and women elect to remain segregated at social gatherings as well as the obvious Man is the Lord of the House.
Also at church. The weekly meeting is three parts, each about an hour long – sacrament meeting, which the entire congregation attends, Sunday School, which is an in-depth reading of one of the LDS scriptures bit by bit over the course of a year, which is broken up by age, and Priesthood/Relief Society, which is god-awful, and segregated by gender. The horror of those can be glimpsed here and here.
At the Singles Ward I attended, a small handful of men found Priesthood so awful that, with the consent of the women [*], they went to Relief Society. I don’t recall any women who went to Priesthood. Whether that happened because the women were too sensible to want to, or the men would not allow it, I honestly don’t know.
* I still feel kind of honored that I was let in to this group. The joke is that the “relief” in Relief Society is being relieved of the presence of men.
So if you can’t make up your mind whether you care more about white supremacism or male supremacism, then the LDS is the religion for you?
remember guys, LDS is simply LSD transposed. i’m guessing good window pane is an integral part of those secret “temple” ceremonies.
If you look into the origins and possible sources/inspirations for the Book of Mormon, it does begin to sound like a narrative written by Herman Melville after 200 mikes:
That is exactly what I was trying to say last night! I assume I can’t work regular office hours is sexist! I can. I was creeped out and offended for hours afterwards.
I just made the mistake of checking out your blog while dieting. That curry chicken salad sandwich would have been much better than my salad.
I blame the women’s groups. They should’ve brought him marble notebooks instead.
or golden tablets
Bain was known for using golden handcuffs. So he might get confused and brag about applying those to women.
Also, shower. Just sayin’.
It’s not a binder, it’s a COOKBOOK!!!!
i wish this blog had “likes” for the comments
Perhaps Mitt was thinking of Eando Binder, whose books include “Adam Link, Robot”, and “The Mind from Outer Space”.
Aaaankhhhhhhhhhhhhh! (fx game show rejection horn)
I figured he meant “foot-binders”.
Apologies if someone has already posted one of these on another thread (I love this version but I’ve seen others), but this is the funniest thing to come out of the binder nonsense.
Are any of us really shocked that a member of the Mormon religion is biased towards women? While every major religion seems to be quite patriarchal in its beliefs, these folks have turned it into a science. I wouldn’t reject Romney just because of his beliefs, but it doesn’t help. I pray to FSM that this monster is not elected to the White House in a few weeks, but I’m fairly confident the President will be re-elected.