They marched in minus 38 degrees in Utqiagvik. They marched in a snowstorm in Anchorage. They marched by the millions around the nation and there was not one violent confrontation, not one arrest, not one complaint from the police that the crowd was unruly or disrespectful. Their strength was in numbers. And what numbers they were!
Plus, women try their best to do things peacefully when possible. On the other hand, push us too far and you will find out just how violent we can get.
Orangeman and his minions may offer something they now term “alternative facts” but the proof is in the pudding – or rather, the pictures. Not only did Orangeman parade to almost empty stands, hold a pre-Inauguration gala that couldn’t attract C list stars, and give an inaugural address that made me wonder if I lived in the America he described, but then he was out marched by women who had finally just had it. And trust me when I tell you, angering that many American women at any given time is a very, very dangerous thing to do.
What this new administration doesn’t seem to get is that women are not going back into the kitchen and the LGBTQ community is not going back in the closet. We have fought long and hard for the gains we’ve managed to make. We are not giving them up so a group of rich corporate executives could rape our country’s wealth while lying through their teeth about what they’re doing.
The mistake these men made was in not understanding that women are no longer Doris Day making dinner in the kitchen in pearls and heels while asking her husband to balance her checkbook because simple math is just beyond her ability. They also made the mistake of not remembering that back in their childhood, it was their mother who knew instinctively when they were lying, not their dads. Their dads might have had their suspicions but mom knew. Somehow she just knew.
Those women who marched on Saturday also knew. They knew that a man who boasted of grabbing women’s private parts because he was famous or rich is not a man they’d want their daughter to date so he’s not a man they want for president. Women know a man who has to brag about the size of his “hands” is a man who probably has no bragging rights about his hands. And a woman knows that the man who openly admits walking into the dressing room of a teen beauty pageant while the young girls are changing is not a man they want their sons to either admire or emulate.
Women are now, and have throughout history, been the ones who kept the home fires burning while men went to war. They kept their families fed while men went out in search of their fortune. They turned our respectable young men and women with often little to no help from their partner. So it seems as though Orangeman should have figured out at some point that he shouldn’t hack off this half of the population. But he clearly didn’t.
Now he’s got the majority of women in the country mad – very, very mad. He wants to defund Planned Parenthood, the place they get their health. Oh yeah, and also provides the service that more than any other cuts down on abortions – contraceptives. Statistics are showing that abortion rates have dropped steadily over the past decades and are now at the lowest point in years. Access to contraception is directly responsible for that number (https://www.guttmacher.org/news-release/2014/us-abortion-rate-hits-lowest-level-1973).
Along with Republicans in Congress, he plans to repeal the Affordable Care Act. So moms with kids with pre-existing conditions or moms with millennials who have moved home for economic reasons will no longer be able to provide their kids with coverage. I know Orangeman insists they have a better plan in the works but seriously, women are experts at sensing procrastination and this is procrastination of the nth degree. It’s as though Orangeman and his buddies woke up one day and thought, “Damn, should have done that project during vacation because now it’s due and I have nothing.”
Perhaps most damning for this administration is that women have simply had it up to our ‘whatever’s” with the crassness, creepiness and general sleaze that it seems to wallow in. So to all those old boys in Washington buckle up. We’re going to make it a very, very bumpy ride for you.