This Saturday, our illustrious congressman, Rodney Davis (R), will host his “inaugural women’s event” at the iHotel and Conference Center in Champaign. According to the e-invite, the event will help women “connect” and “invest in each other through shared stories of finding and embracing their passions, overcoming life’s challenges, and achieving success in their various fields of life.”
The touchy-feely language of this invitation already has me a bit queasy. I know that centuries of patriarchy might make it hard for Rep. Davis to understand that it comes across as condescending to entitle an event “Investing in Women” yet describe it in terms of those mysterious, “womanly” activities of “connecting” and “embracing.”
I can’t help but think, though, that a regressive philosophy of gender comes through in sentences like this one (the first in the e-invite): “Women throughout the U.S. drive the success of our nation by investing in our families, our workforce and our economy.” See how “families” come first in that list? It’s almost like it’s suggesting that women’s primary purpose is to be wives and mothers or something.
What has me more concerned about this event, though, is how its pro-women rhetoric fails to match up with the policies Davis has supported during his time in office. Unsurprisingly, given his party affiliation, Davis is no friend to women when it comes to making decisions that affect their bodies and their lives, obtaining access to healthcare and medical services, or receiving pay that is equal to men’s.
In fact, Davis has gone to great lengths to show that he believes when it comes to your vagina, your representative knows best.
- Davis is anti-choice. Davis does not trust women to make the decision of whether or not to become mothers. We have him to thank for the Title X Abortion Provider Prohibition Act, which he co-sponsored. This bill (H.R. 217) prohibits providing any federal family planning assistance to an entity unless the entity certifies that, during the period of such assistance, the entity will not perform, and will not provide any funds to any other entity that performs, an abortion. The primary objective of this bill was to defund Planned Parenthood, an act that would rob thousands of women of essential services related not only to reproductive health, but also to medical crises like ovarian cancer. Davis also co-sponsored H.R. 732, which proposed to criminalize “transporting a minor child across a state line to obtain an abortion.” Davis doesn’t want women to be able to get abortions, and he’s been using his time in office to chip away at women’s right to make choices about their bodies.
- Davis doesn’t think you need birth control. In a letter to President Barack Obama, Davis and others encourage the president to restrict young girls’ access to Plan B One-Step, a hormonal method of birth control that prevents pregnancy before it happens. Under the dubious rationale of “parental rights,” Davis and his fellow “birth control experts” disagree with the Food and Drug Administration and advise the president to prohibit young girls from purchasing Plan B without a parent’s consent. Moreover, if you are employed by a church or other religious organization that doesn’t want to cover your birth control in its insurance plan, Davis doesn’t care.
- Davis doesn’t think women should be paid as much as men. Davis voted against bringing the Paycheck Fairness Act to the House floor, thus ensuring that it would not become law. The purpose of the Paycheck Fairness Act was to make it illegal for your employer to pay you differently because of the kinds of genitals you tromp around with (according to the act, it is still fine to pay people differently according to education, training, or experience). Davis feels that it should be legal for an employer to pay a woman less than her male coworker for no other reason than her sex.
Women of C-U: Rodney Davis wants you. He wants you to come to his inaugural women’s event on Saturday, he wants you to “connect” and share stories about your passions, and he definitely wants your vote in November.
But he wants more than that. He wants to control where and how you get access to birth control, he wants to decide whether or not you are ready and able to be a mother, and he wants to influence what kind of paycheck you receive from your employer. He wants you to check a box next to his name on November 4th, and then he wants to spend another term in office making it more difficult to live in the United States as a woman.
Election years are funny things. They let us see political candidates like Davis contort their positions in order to appeal to as many voters as possible. These contortions are often ridiculous, as in the case of this “Investing in Women” event. But they’re also disturbing, because they look a lot like lies.