Girl Scouts, Wendy Davis and the Year of the #Hashtag Woman!
Huffington Post Live had a segment asking a panel of women who they would vote for as the woman of the year for 2013. The predictable names from the liberal news site that were mentioned were; Beyoncé, Gloria Steinem and Wendy Davis. They also commendably mentioned Malala Yousafzai, a young Pakistani activist, who is speaking out for education rights for girls in her country of Pakistan. One of the women on the panel known as Feminista Jones voted for the “brave women on Twitter”. Huh? “I would have to say the women on Twitter who are speaking up…using hashtags and bringing people together. This is the year of the women on social media”, said Jones. After watching this segment, I started to take notice of women’s issues through the hashtag and here is what I found.
#GirlScouts
The day after the Huffington Post segment there was a tweet by the Girl Scout organization that linked the article and remarked that those mentioned were “Incredible Ladies”. There was push back against this tweet and the Girl Scout organization came under fire for promoting a woman like Wendy Davis whose only rise to fame was for filibustering the Texas abortion bill that banned abortion after 20 weeks.
Why would the Girls Scouts promote such a controversial figure like Davis who was such an outspoken woman for the pro-abortion movement? That question led me to an article by Christy Volanski that links ties to the Girl Scout organization to Planned Parenthood. Her article details how the organization works alongside abortion providers and promotes pro-abortion role models.
#Doingitall
The next hashtag I noticed was from the Today Show on NBC. The show has a running series entitled (hashtag) “Doing it all”. Its host, Maria Shriver, highlights the challenges that many women face in America both personally and financially and the cost to women of trying to “do it all” while working to reach beyond that glass ceiling. Wouldn’t you know Wendy Davis was one of the women highlighted in the series? The segment outlined the life story of Davis struggling through poverty, teenage pregnancy, education and her rise to the Texas Senate and now her campaign for Texas governor. Davis remarked about her life, “I am a Texas success story. I am the epitome of hard work and optimism”.
#WendyDavis
The last couple of days on Twitter the Wendy Davis hashtag is getting a lot of heated tweets. According to the Dallas Morning News article, there were some aspects of her personal life story that were blurred or eliminated. The one aspect of her story that seems to be getting a lot of attention is that Davis did not achieve her success alone. In fact, her education was paid for by her former husband, Jeff Davis, and she left him and filed for divorce right after the final school loan was paid. He also had parental custody of their two children.
#Thehashtagworld
After trying to make sense of some of these hashtag issues, I noticed a trend and a full circle of this hashtag world. I wondered how the women in social media are using the hashtag to bring people together. All I noticed was the continuing far left agenda of promoting feminist ideals that have nothing to do with women like me. Yet, I am a woman. I am even on Twitter and voice my own opinion with a tweet and a hashtag but surprise, surprise there is no joining of hands and singing “Kumbayah”. What I did notice is that the feminist idea of choice in abortion and self-determination to try and break the glass ceiling seems to be sacrificing the one thing that is indeed a firm foundation- the family. Wendy Davis is revered by the feminist world for her outspoken and brazen stance on abortion, yet her life story reveals she needed her husband (at the time) to help her achieve her goals and help to raise her two daughters.
The hashtag world of women seems to be highlighting what the feminist world is truly about. It’s an agenda that is not only indoctrinating the youngest girls in our community but it’s supported and promoted by the media. It’s revealing that ceilings are being broken but at a great cost to the foundation of the traditional family and the loss of human life through abortion.
The woman of the year for 2013 might be #GloriaSteniem, #WendyDavis or even #Beyoncé according to the feminists. However, if I have to vote for any hashtag it would be for the role of women in the #family. They are not the “brave women on Twitter” who define themselves by a hashtag or an outspoken tweet. No, these are a silent majority of women who nurture the lives of their family and make sacrifices for them every day. They are not striving to break ceilings but simply to build upon a foundation that will firmly stand. A foundation called #family and a hashtag worth celebrating.
