Op-Ed: Joni Balter Comes Out Against I-1125, Does It Wrong, Also Loves Beefy Firemen

Joni "San Francisco Is A Nanny State" Balter is up to her shenanigans once again in a Seattle Times opinion piece. It's not exactly hard to be against Tim Eyman's I-1125, and it is refreshing to see opinion ledes like "Tim Eyman is like the fruit fly who appears every election season and disappears just as the apple goes bad" after misguided Times endorsements of Eyman measures like I-1083. Somehow, though, Balter finds the most inane, archaic angle on the potential defeat of I-1125: WOMEN DOING WOMEN-THINGS.

Here are her justifications for why women will defeat I-1125. No, it's not because I-1125 compromises our right to healthcare or because I-1125 disproportionately affects the disenfranchised. She says that, while she is "not a feminist who thinks women are cooler than men":

• I-1125 is close, and Washington has more female voters than male voters. This at least makes sense, but could apply to any close ballot measure -- which would make this piece essentially an op-ed mad-lib, if not for:


• "Women probably hate tolls as much as men, but their practical side says they have to get the kids to school, to after-school and weekend activities."

... That's it. Women, who are apparently still obligated to accept their fate as second shifting child-bearers (since we know Joni Balter, as a working lady, doesn't find it out of the question that women work), will be more inconvenienced while getting no help from their husbands.

After all, since women are no "cooler" than men, why give them any extra privileges like an equal share in the burden of child-rearing, or just no expectation to have children at all? (And are we really still discussing this, even in the ultra-progressive Northwest?)

The icing on the shit-cake? The crack about having more female voters in Washington than men: "That may be one reason why it's the battle of the beefy firemen on TV ads regarding Initiative 1183, the liquor-privatization measure. But I digress."

Joni, we know you're straight, and now we apparently know you love "beefy firemen". But women having sex drives in the first place? We know that, and we're over it. We live in a city that even your own paper reported in 2006 as being only second to San Francisco in gay and bisexual population, and your flippant aside there served no purpose but to pigeonhole an entire demographic that you yourself are a part of -- our state's women -- as boringly heteronormative.

You call for voters to "step up and do your part" at the end of your piece. Joni, why don't you step up and do your part to fairly represent the amazing diversity of women in our state by not selling us out to archaic, offensive stereotypes? Could you just not come up with a better angle before deadline? Maybe since you still think that feminists are women that think that they're "cooler than men," you just weren't aware.