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My mother who was light years in progressive thinking before most of us were born was caught in a divide of sorts in the late 50s and the early 60s. She was an independent thinker, a musician and political-minded.

And she taught us lessons from her experience. She used to drive my sister and I nuts by making us make choices at very young ages.

“So, what are you going to do?” she would ask us when we found ourselves in a quandry.

“I want you to tell me what to do,” I would say, wondering if such-and-such boy would ever notice my existence or what classes to take in school, etc. Flustered because I didn’t want to study for the test, if you will. I wanted my mom to give me the answers.

“You have to make the decision,” she would say. “If I make it, then how are you going to make on when I’m not around.”

Dang it. I wanted it to be easier than that.

She was a free thinker. She was a little older than your average hippie back then, but too young for the pragmatic world that came from a father in WWII’s generation that still believed a nation would do the right thing. Something I’m not always convinced of and neither was she.

She never thought that. She always said, “Things bubble in the back rooms of politics. And I bet you money there aren’t that many women, if any, sitting back there with a glass of bourbon and a cigar being a part of the decision-making.”

Now there are, but they are still too few.

But here in the conscientiousness of Hoots, which is everywhere, Aunt B. speaks some truths this morning about what goes on outside of the line of view of those who may not live in areas like ours.

There are three things coming together in an interesting way here in Tennessee. One is just the public acknowledgment of a private truth. Rural women and rural men do not lead lives very different from each other. Yes, this means they often face harsher social segregation, in order to enforce gender norms, but their day to day lives are not and have not been very different. Tennessee women have always been extremely competent and brash and able to lead. They’ve had to be in order to survive.

Let’s go back in a time machine and say that, in the past, women had to be clever to succeed and were, at times, thwarted just by the mere fact that they were women. The woman editor here that ran the newspaper but had to give her job “back” when the men came home from war. My grandmother, whose husband left and didn’t return, who raised two children by herself by bloodying her hands in factory work and hard labor. No man helped her. She did it herself. These women were feminists, although I would venture to say they didn’t know it. I would also say they were not any different from the men here because surviving is surviving, not matter what the gender. This was the 40s, campers. It wasn’t last week. B’s right. There isn’t a lot of difference, not even today on the lifestyles of rural men and women.

Just a little bit of Hoots 101 for you.

I realize that Adam is talking about an organic process of conservative women in leadership. I get that. But on the other hand, we must remember that the playing field for women is still not level so the rules are currently under constant revision. I am optimistic. I think there are men and women out there who want equality, but I also think there are a lot who don’t too. The other thing to remember is those women from the past. The ones you may know and the other ones, living in rural America (cause that’s my gig here) that worked and got very little in return other than pushing things forward for future generations. That was our gift. Once again, they got squat.

But they made it better for us. And this is probably happening right now as well, but only history will make that call.

I’m pleased to see women becoming leaders but for every article like Kleinheider’s which spotlights conservative women, I’d also like to see those same people not tearing Nancy Pelosi or Hilary Clinton a new one every time they take a breath. Or focusing on Beverly Marrero or Jeanne Richardson, who fight just as hard and are sometimes left out in the cold with snark and dismissals, not saying the left doesn’t do this practice too. They are amazing women. Yes, it’s Blackburn and Palin who have the shining stars right now, but there are others, underdogs if you will, who are also fighting the good fight. And there are tons of women behind the scenes, which is another story for another day.

So, decisions are made without an owner’s manual, just like they were 70 years ago (or throughout history, really.) And, yes, I believe that even now women, just like my grandmother, are getting their hands into the hard labor of political leadership. There is no right way or wrong way for this to happen.

It just needs to happen.

If those women are going to be in the backrooms with the bourbon and the cigars, not matter what letter is behind their names, they need to remember that they represent all of us, not just a vehicle to remain in office.

My grandmother didn’t know what a feminist was. She just was one.

There isn’t answers to this just yet. These decisions, however, cannot made by others because if you aren’t part of the process, you are going to have to take your soup the way it’s served and no one likes cold soup. It’s up to us, as democrats, to find our way and to look at posts and observations such as these as a learning curve as we head into 2010.

And Aunt B., did some schooling here. Democrats, you do need to follow some lessons from the right. They are getting the press for their female leaders.

You aren’t.

And you can change this.