Misogynistic Louisiana State Representatives started cracking sexist jokes when an age limit bill for erotic dancers was introduced on the House floor, but were immediately shamed into silence by a female fellow lawmaker.
House Bill 468, which would increase the age limit on strippers from 18 to 21 years old, was not taken seriously by some of the male representatives.
House Republican Sam Jones first questioned the piece of legislation and began wisecracking soon after as Democratic Rep. Walt Leger introduced the bill.
“I appreciate you wanting to raise the minimum wage,” Jones said. “Are you going to put a maximum age on that?”
Instead of shooting down the sexist comments, Leger joined in the degradation and contempt of women.
“I’m open to suggestions,” Leger said as members of the House laughed. “I’m not looking to comment on anybody’s tastes.”
The First Amendment, which was offered by Rep. Kenneth Havard (R), of the bill states that “between twenty-one and twenty-eight years of age and shall be no more that one hundred sixty pounds in weight.”
“In the spirit of this legislative session, I will offer up this amendment as a part of keeping the spirit alive of trimming the fat,” Havard quipped, sparking more laughs from lawmakers.
About this time, Rep. Julie Stokes (R) had just about enough of this flagrant disrespect of every woman in the building.
“I’ve got to say, looking out over this body, I’ve never been more repulsed to be part of it,” she said, thereby silencing the laughter. “I’m going to tell you one thing, the disrespect — and I saw it in 2013 in committee, and I’ve never been so disgusted to be part of a committee as I was in 2013, somebody made comments, like, ‘What if it’s a classy strip club like Cheetah’s in Atlanta?’ That’s not the way we behave in this body.”
“I don’t even know what Representative Havard was thinking,” she continued. “That’s a dangerous thing to do politically. It was a bad idea… Look around at their own bodies, and their own daughters.”
“I refuse the spirit of everything that I heard and I can’t even believe the behavior in here. I think we need to call an end to this. I hear derogatory comments about women in this place regularly. I hear and I see women get treated differently than men, and I’m going to tell you what, you gave me a perfect forum to talk about it right now.”
“Because it has got to stop. That was utterly disrespectful and disgusting. I really don’t have anything left to say,” Stokes concluded.
Watch video via Raw Story here:
Leave a Reply