Muscatine Misogynists Aim to Silence a Woman Mayor

Captions: 1. Maria Houser Conzemius at the Sag Wagon Bar in Cedar Rapids, getting ready with Irish coffee for the Ididaride Ride, 2/4/2017. Photo taken by Shana Kellor of Lone Tree. 2. My personal trainer and husband, Jim Conzemius.

My personal trainer usually gets up before I do. When I get up, he waits for me to drink black coffee and read the newspapers for an hour until my thyroid medicine kicks in (I have hypothyroidism, a low metabolic rate). Then he makes me a good hot breakfast.

On Sundays, we watch our Sunday news shows: “This Week” with George Stephanopoulos, “Full Measure” with Sharyl Attkisson, “Iowa in Focus” with Kevin Barry (which I didn’t realize had a right-wing slant until he filmed Sen. Joni Ernst talking calmly at a town hall meeting without a single boo or protest sign), Charlie Rose’s "The Week" on PBS, whatever’s on Iowa Public TV after that, then David Yepsen's news show, "Iowa Press."

During “Market to Market,” Jim gets on his bike clothes, and I know I’d better too, because my personal trainer is worried that I’m getting soft and won’t be ready for RAGBRAI. It’s March, and he rides to work almost every day, a seven-mile round trip.

On a long weekend, I know I’m in for three days of solid riding plus cycling classes (RPM [Revolutions Per Minute] with Rick Spear at Fit). If Jim takes Saturday off from work, we might ride with the MelonHeads in Muscatine. That’s something of a hardship for me if not for him. He likes beer and male conversation. I can't drink beer. It just doesn't agree with me, so I have Irish coffee if it's cold or a gin-and-tonic.

I’m usually the only woman in a group of unselfconsciously misogynistic men. None of the other MelonHeads' wives ride with them. If they did at one time, they don't any more.

Several MelonHeads are senior research engineers and one is a former vice president of prominent Muscatine industries. They’ve been successful enough in life to lack the self-awareness that comes from failure. One talks nonstop about himself, his wife, and his children without ever asking me about my life, my children, anything.

His wife has asked him, “Don’t you ever shut up?”

Since the MelonHeads hold forth in a loud, males only conversation, my husband has to speak up and make them listen to me when I have something to say.

The Muscatine MelonHeads remind me of my father-in-law at my brother-in-law’s and sister-in-law’s wedding in Kimballton, Iowa. Con, my husband's Dad, was a successful pharmacist who lived long enough to make a pile. At Jim's brother's wedding, he sat comfortably in small town Iowa holding forth among an awed group of wedding participants glued to his every word. He was rich, so therefore he must be wise, right? That's the thinking that helped elect Trump.

At home, when Con's wife and children were watching TV upstairs, he would harangue them until they went downstairs. When he followed them down there, they would go upstairs. He was everywhere they wanted to be until they weren’t. He was puzzled.

Over a lifetime, he collected stamps and coins. He traveled on the Queen Elizabeth II to the other side of the earth (China) with Jim’s mom and her two sisters with the proceeds of the sale of three stamps.

When I met him, he called me “Irene” and began dancing with me. He thought I was his first wife, who died young of tuberculosis at Oakdale Hospital where Jim and I met at the University Hygienic Lab. Oakdale Hospital has been torn down since.

When Con found out I was (am) a Democrat, he literally had me backed up against a wall. A Republican, he argued with me for hours until I was utterly exhausted. Then he predicted I’d be a politician. That’s actually the last thing I’d like to be. Try disagreeing with a politician. Try finding integrity in a politician. Take Johnson County Supervisor Rod Sullivan, for example. I questioned his methods when he tried to avoid a democratic vote while staging a coup to make himself chair of a committee after Kingsley Botchway stopped showing up when he got a job with the school district.

"What about a vote?" I demanded of Sullivan after his questionable fait accompli to make himself chair in Botchway's absence.

"We'll vote by email," he said. Funny thing, I never got an email. And I was never invited to another committee meeting.

I complained to Caroline Dieterle once about how Rod Sullivan ignores democratic processes and is a rude bully.

"I don't care how he does things as long as he keeps doing the right thing," she replied.

I do care how he does things. He rules by intimidation, threats, and exclusion from his Democratic club. For the most part, I find the Democrats in power in Johnson County utterly repellent, especially the men.

Misogynistic bullying is everywhere on the Left and on the Right, and the Misogynist-in-Chief is currently in the White House. An old son-of-a-gun called Tom Ashbrook on his morning show on NPR and said, “I’m glad the Russians [tilted] the election toward Donald Trump because it saved us all from Hillary Clinton.”

I hope he chokes on his morning coffee.

Is it hard for me to believe that Diana Broderson, the mayor of Muscatine, is being impeached for misogynistic reasons? Not at all. A liberal writer just wrote that "Ivanka Trump in the west wing of the White House is more evil than Islamic terror."

Last I knew, Ivanka Trump advocated for paid maternity leave for women. According to Jennifer Sisk, a law student at the time, Neil Gorsuch, a judge who Trump nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court, asked a class he taught at the University of Colorado Law School last year, "Raise your hand if you think women manipulate law firms to give them paid maternity leave." A few hands went up.

He said, "Come on, guys. All of your hands should be up. Many women do this."

According to Sisk, Judge Gorsuch said, "employers, specifically law firms, should ask women seeking jobs about their plans for having children." He implied that women manipulate companies starting in the interview stage to extract maternity benefits.

I don't think Ivanka Trump has much influence on her father or Neil Gorsuch would not be a SCOTUS nominee.

When, as a society, are we going to tire of burning women as witches and excluding them from power or even from having a voice?

A right-wing acquaintance of mine on Facebook called the women on the U.S. Supreme Court "old hags" and then claimed with a straight face that he's not a misogynist. It is to laugh.

When are we going to be allowed to talk to men as equals, whether we're on the Left or on the Right? When will a woman be president? When will women stop being sexually harassed at work? When will women who do the same work as men be paid the same as men? Right now, women make 80 cents for every dollar that a man makes for doing the same work, even in medical subspecialties.