What we are watching is the sputtering outrage of the dying patriarchy. The gored oxen of cisgendered straight white entitled Republican men — emboldened by the defeat of Hillary Clinton and the election of their supreme leader — are now witnessing this:
The Questioning Of Their Masters of the Universe
The Taking Out Of Their (so-called) Attorney General With Yes or No Questions
The Demanding of Answers From Their Judge Rage Beer
The Presiding Over “Their” United States House of Representatives
And they are striking back.
During the week preceding Mothers’ Day — a celebration that was launched by women as a cornerstone of the peace movement — state legislatures controlled by misogynists have enacted laws designed to punish women and girls. They aren’t even pretending to care about “women’s health” any more. Nothing about bans on termination after six weeks of pregnancy has anything to do with health, science or reality. This is NOT a baby:
But in 6-week-ban states, this barely formed embryo (the size of a lentil) counts as a person, regardless of the circumstances of its creation. Raped by a relative or stranger? Too bad. Your own life is endangered by continuing a pregnancy? Deal with it. This isn’t “heartbeat legislation,” it’s the front line of the War on Women.
And this:
Enough.
These battles, too, shall be won.
Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts,
whether our baptism be that of water or of fears!
Say firmly: “We will not have great questions decided by
irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking
with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be
taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach
them of charity, mercy and patience.
...From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: “Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.”
Mother’s Day Proclamation of Peace ~ Julia Ward Howe.
Arise!
We win when we stick together.
This evergreen from Julia Valenti (originally posted in January 2018):
In the end, what stuck with me was the way women stuck up for each other. It reminded me that #MeToo isn’t going anywhere, and that anyone who tries to punish the leaders - whether they are behind the scenes or on the front the lines - will be stopped. In a time when everything feels so hard, that’s something to be grateful for.
The Guardian
We win when we don’t allow harassers to coerce our silence.
A journalist used his job as a pretext to contact a woman, then sent her a harassing message. Then he had the nerve to ask that she keep it to herself. She didn’t.
"Conspiracies bloomed that I had manufactured the exchange, or I was blackmailing the man (for what? Because I love the predictable deluge of harassment that followed?), or that some flirting had transpired and I simply deleted the messages. None of this aligns with the truth, but it seems it’s more convenient than believing a woman would react beyond the expected norms of self-minimalization to actually stand up for herself.”
The Guardian
We win when we support scientific advances in women’s health.
MIT researchers have invented a new AI-driven way of looking at mammograms that can help detect breast cancer in women up to five years in advance. A deep learning model created by a team of researchers from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and Massachusetts General Hospital can predict -- based on just a mammogram -- whether a woman will develop breast cancer in the future. And unlike older methods, it works just as well on black patients as it does on white patients.
Engadet
We win when we don’t allow men to control the narrative about electability.
Case-in-point: "Warren is accused, in plain language, of being uppity — a woman who has the bad grace to be smarter than the men around her, without downplaying it to assuage their egos. But running in a presidential race is all about proving that you are smarter than the other guy. By demanding that Warren disguise her exceptional talents, we are asking her to lose. Thankfully, she’s not listening. She is a smart woman, after all.
Medium
We win when we work together to enact meaningful legislation.
Since the #MeToo movement went viral, millions of survivors have been empowered to share their stories, high-profile abusers have been held accountable, and our culture has begun to shift. Now is our chance to turn that shift into concrete, lasting policy change.
The BE HEARD in the Workplace Act will ensure everyone can work with safety and dignity by:
- eliminating the federal tipped wage to ensure no one has to tolerate sexual harassment to make minimum wage.
- expanding federal anti-harassment laws to cover all workers.
- funding programs to assist employers in preventing and addressing harassment, as well as grants for legal assistance to low-income workers.
-prohibiting mandatory arbitration and limiting nondisclosure agreements to increase transparency.
National Womens Law Center and Ultra Violet Action
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(As always, this is a group effort. Thank you to Angmar, besame, ramara and ksmoore77 for your contributions. Gratitude to the WOW Sisterhood and our sisters, everywhere. Sisterhood IS Powerful.)