Lately I’ve been turning to news about women in other countries instead of my own to feel better about gender progress. Women in Saudi Arabia get the vote.  Libyan women help lead their revolution.

So, what have we done for ourselves lately?

I know it’s relative. American women have many freedoms. And Saudi women still can’t drive. But of the best places in the world to be a woman, the United States currently ranks number eight, said a Newsweek report.

It helped to meet up with Jackie Speier, the Bay Area Democratic Congresswoman who earlier this year delivered what some dubbed “the speech heard round the world.” Jackie, you’ll remember, told a colleague he didn’t know squat abut women and abortion. Then she stood on the floor of the House and told her own story about having to abort at 17 weeks due to a medical complication.

It was a purely spontaneous reaction she recalled at a recent talk I attended.  In the debate over funding Planned Parenthood New Jersey Republican Chris Smith read graphic descriptions about abortion. When he started in about a leg being pulled out and sawed off Jackie said she had to scrap her intended speech and take him on.

After it was over she said she was “kind of trembling” but the response was overwhelmingly positive. John Lewis, the congressman from Georgia, told her it was the most incredible speech he’d heard on the floor.

“He said it took him back to when he was a young boy and his aunt one day appeared with blood all over her dress. His mother took his aunt to the hospital and she never came home again.”

With Jackie’s help Planned Parenthood held onto its funding. It also gained a huge increase in members.

Most people first heard about Jackie Speier in 1978 when she was shot but survived the massacre at Jonestown which killed her boss Congressman Leo Ryan. She’s no lightweight. She walks into a room with her big smile and pile of auburn hair and starts talking about how we’re really in trouble, especially women, and she has some ideas.

In her talk at a women’s networking organization in Sonoma County, not all women, not all Democrats, Jackie brought up two more issues that get her going.  Rape in the military and sexual trafficking.

She’s been collecting accounts of soldiers raping soldiers and has started telling them one story at a time on the floor of the House. There’s an Army sergeant who went to her military chaplain and was told the rape might have been God’s will and she needed to go to church more.

Jackie said: “I cannot stand that a soldier could be the object of violence from another solider, more than from the enemy.”

She’s also working to toughen laws against sex trafficking in this country, which she said has increased with the internet and since drug cartels began taking over. She told about a 16 year old girl who was forced to have sex from 10 to 14 times a day.

At a time when the communication skills of many government leaders seem to range from equivocation to hiding under their seats, it’s so refreshing to meet a Jackie Speier who is unafraid to speak the truth to power.

Jackie said, “I may not be senior enough to get things through committee but I can use the floor of the House.”

Not surprising one of her guiding quotes is, “Well behaved women seldom make history.”

The name of the big pointy rock in Mendocino County that sits along the Russian River and looks at highway 101 is having a name change. She will no longer be Squaw Rock, which she’s been known as for 50 years, but Frog Woman Rock or in Pomo dialect, Maatha kawao qhabe.

The reason? Some consider the word squaw a derogatory term for Native American women. And also because the Pomo Indians who settled in this part of Northern California and know the true mythology behind the landmark say Frog Woman is her rightful name.

I love this story. It took me back to a time when we got into discussions over the appropriateness and fairness of words. When we attempted to do the right thing by carefully thinking before we spoke. Of course there’s been some grousing over the name change with people saying it’s a dumb thing to worry about in these awful times. And while one might wish the state of California would use its genius to concentrate on creating jobs and saving schools, I was happy to see that some people are still sensitive to how we use our words. Especially now when the national conversation has pretty much devolved into grunts, accusations, lies and insensitive, hateful name-calling.

The idea behind correcting the language is to improve, update and adjust it to reflect current sensibilities and proper usage. It is not meant to annoy people although it almost always does. Some words don’t keep up with the times. Like back when we agreed that not everyone who runs a meeting is a male so it’s silly to call us all chairmen. And not everyone who fight fires is a fireman and not everyone who catches salmon in the Pacific is a fisherman.

Other words were actually hurtful and needed to be changed out of respect. Retarded became developmentally disabled. Deaf became hearing impaired. A person with a same-sex partner preferred to be called gay, not homosexual. People with certain diseases asked to be called survivors instead of victims.

Changing the name of a big old boulder sitting in the river in Mendocino County will not have the same far-reaching affect on the language but it means something to historians and local Native American tribes. In renaming Squaw Rock the California State Historical Commission said the word squaw has a condescending image and has been used as a racial epithet.

The stories connected to the landmark are pretty good. It was dubbed Squaw Rock because according to one legend a young Indian woman, left by her Indian chief boyfriend for another, climbed to the top of the cliff, saw her former betrothed with his new woman below, picked up a big rock and jumped, killing herself and them.

Less operatic but no less violent, the Frog Woman legend holds that a creature half frog and half woman lived in a cave in the rock and devoured men after having her way with them.

Some people will probably continue to call it Squaw and others, in the interests of fairness and accuracy, will try out Frog Woman and eventually get used to it. These things take time. I sometimes forget and refer to flight attendants as stewardesses. And I’m never 100 percent sure whether to refer to someone as African-American or black until I ask.

Language is a living evolving thing. It needs to be cared for. Not abused. Now will someone please tell that to those loose tongues in Washington?

Sometimes I feel like our political leaders are involved in a street fight. And it’s getting ugly and scary and we’re not sure what the fight is really about. And who started it and how it will end. But one thing we do suspect is that when it’s over the blood will be on us.

Or it’s like a domestic squabble where the police are called to figure out what’s going on and in the process one of the cops gets shot. And we’re the cop.

I’ve been dealing a lot in images lately because I feel there is such little straight talk on what’s really happening in the free-for-all over the deficit, spending cuts, tax breaks, tax loopholes, entitlements, revenue increases and the debt ceiling.

We’re just sitting there waiting for the fight to end and see how we get hit.

The president likes his metaphors. He says we have to rip off the Band-Aid. He says we have to eat our peas. Tighten the old belts. I know he’s talking to me when he says that and people like me. But, is that everybody? Are the rich eating their peas?

I’ve pretty much stopped paying attention to political leaders of either side who talk about “our seniors” as if they really care. If you care about “our seniors” you don’t bludgeon Medicare and Social Security. Right now I feel like those of us who thought we could rely on both are being pushed to the edge of a cliff and some people are yelling “save them” and others are saying “jump.”

It’s particularly telling when members of Congress talk about “our seniors” as if they aren’t one of us. The average age of both houses of Congress is 58, which is old enough to be long on the AARP mailing list and to move into a retirement community. You’d think they’d relate but they don’t. Is it because nearly half of Congress are millionaires? So they don’t personally worry about safety nets. And so all the talk is about getting rid of programs rather than figuring out a way to save them.

Here’s another image. We like to say we’re all in the same boat but this one feels like the Titanic.
The rich are on top and the rest of us are in steerage. And when the ship starts to take on water, the people in steerage are the first to drown and the people upstairs keep dancing. But then the whole thing goes under. And even the rich are looking around for the security of a life boat.