As I constantly find myself battling with feminist issues in the workplace and “real life” I am inspired by a few quotes from Ms. Thatcher.

“If you set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing.”

“Being powerful is like being a lady.  if you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.”

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I sometimes joke with Chris that he’s white on the outside and Mexican on the inside.  He spent most of his life in the Rio Grande Valley, he likes more Mexican food and spicy dishes than I do and he understands a good amount of Spanish.  But it’s all in good fun because he knows how passionate I am about my culture and about feminism.  I am constantly yelling at the TV for portraying Hispanics as a caricature of a human or why so many Hispanic women get stuck portraying the spicy Latina~ on a TV show or the maid.  So on a post about Miriam Martinez, who I believe feeds into the caricatures of Hispanic women I received this comment:

The comment itself isn’t worth responding, it’s clear this person is an uneducated moron, a little Internet troll!  How cute.

But the context of the comment IS worth responding to.  Let me make this abundantly clear, since I sometimes feel like I am in an interracial relationship: who you choose to marry doesn’t make you less of a Hispanic.  Likewise, disagreeing with a fellow Hispanic doesn’t make you less Hispanic, doesn’t make you a sellout and doesn’t make you a coconut.  Imagine if no Hispanic women had stood up to the Machismo of our culture and dared to get educated and be something great.  Imagine if our culture didn’t have those feminists who stood up against norms and did what they were passionate about.  What a world we would live in!  Those women disagreed with other Hispanics and it didn’t mean they were sellouts.

These racial epithets are exactly what need to die down.  Instead of embracing the love I have for my husband, that’s what I get?  Really.  Why not channel that pitiful rage against this:

“My father had a ranch; we used to have 50-60 wetbacks to pick tomatoes,” he told KRBD. “It takes two people to pick the same tomatoes now. It’s all done by machine.”

I’ve unfortunately heard that word used, while I was at a campaign event, heading up a table of volunteers who happened to be Hispanics and I shut it down right away.  The man said “Oh I didn’t mean anything racial by it!”  But you did, you couldn’t just learn that word out of the blue right?

My point with this post is simple: love who you love, believe what you believe, but leave race out of it.  I’m not naive enough to think everyone is blind to race, I think you should be proud of where you came from, but you shouldn’t be discriminated against, or treated negatively for what race or ethnicity you are.

It’s 2013, I shouldn’t have to write posts like this.

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I believe in love and marriage.  I believe that a couple’s business is there own and frankly shouldn’t even be associated with the government to begin with.  In a libertarian sense, the government should stay out of my business.

Nonetheless, because government decided to be in the business of marriage, it’s an issue we are now talking about.  I don’t believe this to be a political issue.  I don’t believe this to be a religious issue.  I believe this to be an issue of equal treatment for all.

I support gay marriage.  Since getting married this past December, I feel even more strongly about the issue.  Will you join me in supporting the rights of same-sex couples to marry?

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I think this is what’s missing from the GOP today.  Both Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush welcomed MJ to the White House and embraced 80s pop culture.  President Obama and his famous friends, Beyonce and Jay Z, seem to be ridiculed by the right for his attention to the celebrities who help him be so COOL.

Pop culture isn’t something to shy away from.  It’s yet another way to reach your target audience, and like the Gipper did..HANG OUT WITH MICHAEL JACKSON!!

Anyway, Happy Birthday Ronald Reagan!

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That being said, Miriam Martinez probably needs a lot of work in campaign skills, or maybe just how running for office works.

Former Univision personality Miriam Martinez, who launched a quixotic and ultimately unsuccessful campaign for Texas House District 41 last year, announced Monday that she’s gunning for Gov. Rick Perry’s job.

Martinez, 40, owns a small media company that caters to Mexican clients and hosts a Spanish-language talk show called “Red Hot Texas Politics with Miriam Martinez” on KIRT-AM. Before running for District 41 last year, Martinez was perhaps best known for her broadcast work Univision and an interview with the San Antonio Express-News about her extensive cosmetic surgery.

“I’m your Hispanic Margaret Thatcher,” Martinez said. “Half Eva Perón and a little touch of Madonna.”

I’ve often wondered if Martinez actually understands the basis of conservatism or where she even stands on the issues, and she says this to The Monitor:

“I am a Republican. I am truly a Republican,” Martinez said. “I believe in God. I believe in small business. I believe in job creation. I believe that children can pray in school.”

Ummmm…well then she said this too:

“I don’t see Abbott as a threat. I don’t see Perry as a threat,” Martinez said. “The difference between them and myself is I’m Martinez. And there are more Martinez in Texas than Abbott and Perry.”

On the heels of my presentation yesterday on Hispanic outreach, I can tell ya this is definitely a surefire way to flop.  I revert back to the point I made in my presentation yesterday: not all Hispanics are alike, our last names do not define us, our skin color does not define us, even politics don’t define us, but sincerity of a candidate is the true measure of outreach to a group, be it Hispanics or the youth.

Good luck Miriam, because

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I had a great time speaking on “Hispanic Outreach” at the RightOnline Social Media boot camp in Austin today!

It was great to see so many like minded folks in one room working to get the conservative movement re-fueled and ready to go.

I’ll post my presentation when I get back to SA but I wanted to thank the Franklin Center, Americans for Prosperity, Empower Texans and Attorney General Greg Abbott for putting the whole show together!

Update, I’ve uploaded my presentation here for those who missed it.  Overall, I believe that communicating with Hispanics online is just like going back to the basics of communication: be sincere, build rapport, and be on their side.  I think conservatives have a lot of bridges to repair but it can be done.

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Did I mention you’ll hear from me?  Be sure to check out the Hispanic Outreach panel to find out how YOU, yes YOU, can reach out to the nation’s fastest growing demographic.

Join us on January 21st in Austin, TX for our RightOnline Social Media Bootcamp with Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott. Breakfast & Lunch are both provided with your registration fee.

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We’re still a long way from the equality we deserve, but I think women are making big strides…we just have to work twice as hard to get to the top.

Created by: LearnStuff.com

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Well, this looks like a statistic the whole population should be concerned with right?  After all, youths are the future workforce, and women especially are finally taking their rightful places in their careers and breaking glass ceilings left and right.

But instead comments like this proved exactly why there is a need for a feminist movement, why there is a need for women to speak up for other women and how some myths are so institutionalized in people that they carelessly make sweeping generalizations on social networks for thousands of people to see and link their names to:

Let’s start with James Ray White:

Right!  He quickly qualifies his sweeping generalization by saying “This is not every one but a large portion of them!”  Yet the institutionalized misogyny was so deep rooted that he left his original comment “because they all get pregnant at 16…”

Right…nice way of “clarifying” what you “truly meant”.

How about Austin McNeill:

Austin, you’re a big boy, you own your own piece of technology that made it possible for you to write your caveman comment! So make your own damn sandwich.

And Rowdy Fugitt? I apologize for the obscenity but hey, this is what we deal with as women:

I hope your mother sees this!

Of course Jeremy Roach has clearly figured out the whole nationwide recession thing and solved problems for everyone in America struggling to find a job right now:

There are lots of other obscene gems throughout that page, which I hope the admin will take down, but at the same time it’s great that these people immortalized their misogyny on the interwebz.  After all, the internet is forever!   Glad I got those screen caps because sure enough the comments have disappeared.

The real point of this post? That on a daily basis invectives like this are flung at women for no good reasons.  Not a day goes by that harassing, misogynist comments aren’t flung at a woman on a daily basis, believe me I work in a downtown metropolitan area.

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I’ll let Carina Castro say what I feel through her epic cuteness of hair flipping.

Democrats have high hopes that last night’s keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention, San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro, can deliver Latino voters to the Democratic ticket and give them a decisive electoral majority.

Yet Castro, who played up his Mexican heritage by speaking a few lines in Spanish, admits “he doesn’t really speak Spanish,” according to a 2010 profile in The New York Times Magazine.

I understand Spanish and as Ted Cruz would say, I grew up learning Spanglish in the Rio Grande Valley.  I don’t speak it well, especially not well enough to speak it when I’m not around my close family and friends. I wonder how many of the DNC delegates even speak Spanish to begin with?  Does my inability to speak Spanish suddenly mean I’m not of Mexican descent? LOL I can’t believe I even had to write that sentence.

But the post from the Daily Caller only gets more offensive:

A number of news outlets have suggested that Julian Castro represents the Democrats’ answer to Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, who, like Castro, is Hispanic and spoke at his party’s national convention.

Unlike Castro, however, Rubio is fluent in Spanish, as evidenced by an interview he gave Telemundo last year.

The New York Times Magazine profile of Castro noted that his lack of fluency in the language is “a fact he isn’t eager to advertise.”

Do we see a trend here?  Attacks against Ted Cruz, Julian Castro and Marco Rubio have mainly been about their ethnicity, ability to speak Spanish and magical ability to be the Super Latino vote collectors of their parties.

I think that despite Hispanics being the fastest growing minority in the country (already the majority in some areas), maybe “mainstream America” is so scared of that fact that they pit Hispanics against each other not for their politics but for who is more Hispanic than the other.

You can speak Spanglish or Spanish, grow up in South Texas or South Florida, if your background is Hispanic, then that’s all that needs to be said about that.  You shouldn’t have to defend your how Hispanic you are. Que triste.

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