Editorial: Voters in Los Angeles and California elected a wave of women to the U.S. House of Representatives in November. But in the past month, as the media have been reporting on the wave of women who have been elected to Congress in the Golden State, a few women in the state have called out sexism against these women and said they were being treated more as equals than as human beings.
These women weren’t alone. In fact, they were part of a group of women who have spoken out against how the media has characterized them. This group, which includes former Nevada and South Carolina Democrats and two state senators, took their concerns directly to the people of California as they voted in November.
In a video posted on Facebook by their campaign chair Jovanka Beckles, the women of the “Fight PAC” were shown calling President Trump’s comments to Republican Senator Jeff Flake, where he said he may have “gotten a little bit too close to the edge a little bit” in his comments on the “Access Hollywood” tapes, the “Access Hollywood” tapes were re-aired by NBC, and in the midst of the election, Trump went after Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel, who ruled against Trump’s temporary travel ban, “the judge from California.”
Beckles said they didn’t make the video to make any political statements. Instead, she just thought it was “a good reminder for all of us to make sure that all of our rights are preserved.”
“When you are trying to define someone beyond their personality, a lot of times it’s all you have to go on,” Beckles said, “what you see is what you see, and so it’s important for us to say that we are human beings just like everybody else.”
Beckles said that in the video she and the other women from the group are speaking out to make clear that they are not afraid to say that they are victims, “They are victims of this culture that wants to hide, they want to erase female victimization so that they can be told that there’s something wrong with them and they are too masculine and too aggressive and too bold.”
Beckles said that what she and the other women want is for the same thing that they are speaking