by Ruth A. Sheets
For generations there has been a kind of war against women. Women are the target but it is not always clear who make up the army working so hard to defeat women. What would the defeat look like? It depends where one is.
In my world, it was recognizing boys as the most important people in every classroom, expecting them to give the “best” answers, to see them as being the smartest, most clever beings. I was lucky because most of the girls in my classes were not having it. I learned from them and they from me that boys were no better, smarter, or more worthy of acknowledgment than we girls.
During my sophomore year in college, abortion became legal which meant women could expect a safe and legal end to pregnancy if needed, although, anyone who chose abortion was supposed to feel ashamed, hide her face, and be seen as spoiled goods. Shame is a powerful weapon. It has been used for millennia to keep women in their place. Now, the anti-woman forces had a cause for their scorn, and the best part, they could describe these women as murderers and baby-killers. Wow! The emotional appeal of this language was enormous. And, , instead of being passive players in the “put girls down” covert and sometimes overt skirmishes in classrooms and work places, conservative women could battle other women in public, screaming their own righteousness for all to see.
The word “feminist” was seen as a curse and to admit you were one was permission for those screamers to attack. All this was forced into the foreground to distract everyone from what men were doing. After the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade that women had the right to choose abortion, the Court began slowly to morph into a stealth squad working against women’s rights. When rights were altered or removed, it nearly always negatively impacted women: religious groups didn’t have to have insurance for employees that covered abortion care, limits to abortion were added bit by bit and now the Court has permitted a 6-week limit to abortions in Texas and a woman justice was right there ruling against women. Both armies are now on the field and women (and men) are on both sides.
I can’t help being disgusted the way conservative (OK, right-wing) justices can rule our nation with their own personal ideologies, and do it in the middle of the night with no public hearing. That’s what happened in Texas. In the middle of the night, the Supreme Court conservatives allowed the six-week abortion ban in Texas to go into effect. It essentially overturns Roe v. Wade, a precedent for more than 48 years.
This in itself is bad enough, but the problem is deeper. The Texas law also gives people, not even just citizens of Texas the right to stalk people as vigilantes to do a gotcha on people who may or may not actually help a woman to obtain an abortion, which should still be her right. Then, the stalkers, the reporters, get $10,000 for their vigilantism.
When one side in a war has extreme power at every level: the courts, Congress, and in the states, the conflict is one-sided and nearly impossible for the defenders to gain any ground.
Setting citizens of this country against each other is at least as powerful a weapon as the shaming that was and is employed so effectively. It is pretty much guaranteed that those who will be targeted by this appalling vigilantism will be people of color because that is how it always is in this country where systemic racism ties in so neatly with systemic misogyny.
There are a few million more women in this country than men, so one would think sheer numbers would give us an advantage. The problem is, the promotion of male supremacy begins at birth. Boys are allowed to get away with things girls would never be permitted to do. We even let males form gangs that terrorize whole neighborhoods, communities, and countries. And, the hard part to admit, women are part of this socialization, this permission for boys to remain jubenilized, pushing others around with their greater physical strength but acting like spoiled toddlers. We as a nation arm men to fight the cause de jour then bring them back into society with no preparation to be full adults who can function without being ordered about, and without weapons. Women often become targets.
In Afghanistan, the United States was at war for 20 years and never thought to arm the masses of women who would be victims of the child-men that make up the Taliban. Why didn’t we? Women were not seen as important enough to prepare to protect themselves and their children when the crazies returned to power, which it was pretty clear would happen.
Women all over the world are at the mercy of armed child-men who are so scared of women’s power they work really hard to keep women down and out of public life. The men who rule so many countries are unable to negotiate with anyone because they are used to ordering people about listening to no one if they can help it. It is most frightening when these childish rulers have nuclear weapons as in China and almost in Iran, North Korea, and possibly other countries. Who will suffer most when these child-men go off and attack - women and children.
Abortion is just an issue with emotion tied to it that conservative Americans can use against women, to try to keep them subservient, poor and in low-paying jobs. I can’t help but wonder what happens when the current Court, ruling against what women and many men want, declares Roe v. Wade dead and allows vigilantism and other acts to divide our nation further. What will they and the anti-woman faction choose as the next battleground? Will it be birth control so women will be pregnant as often as men can make it happen? Will it be keeping pregnant women out of the workplace, you know, men shouldn’t have to look at women that fat? Will rape be made acceptable? After all, one of the justices on the Supreme Court has credibly been accused of attempted rape. Will it be ending following up on accusations of sexual harassment in the workplace? After all, another Supreme Court justice has credibly been accused of sexual harassment.
The guarantee is, the war against abortion will continue in some form because it has provided a lot of victories for the armies of taking away women’s rights as well as civil rights. It seems women are going to have to step up our preparedness to continue the fight. We need to find new weapons whether perhaps through women-owned media. Maybe we can actively work out ways to circumvent Republican moves to keep us from voting. We might get more pro-women candidates into office all over the country and work to vote out the women-hating women that have taken so many offices lately. We all need to be engaged because the anti-woman forces are gathering for a major battle and we women are not really prepared. That’s probably because we are doing the work of holding our society together, as always, but particularly now during a pandemic: our schools, our churches and other religious institutions, our homes, our communities. Where are the men? Many are standing with us, but many are not.
We need to more forcefully demand justice and laws that work for us. I know, Good luck with that. Maybe we should turn the weapons used against us back on them, shame them for leaving our children in poverty or that the men act like spoiled brats. We need to try just about everything in this fight if we would not lose ground, or lose the war.
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