I suppose I should start a post like this, on my travel- and running-focused blog, to insert a disclaimer, simply to say that this post is uncharacteristically serious and political, and to divulge the fact that it is 100% an opinion piece, not intended to thrust my beliefs on any readers, but instead to explain why I chose to participate in a historically monumental event last weekend right here in my home city. And regardless of the impressions of social media trolls I have encountered, yes, the Women’s March on Washington, and its nearly 700 sister marches across the globe and all seven continents, was huge, the largest protest in all of history. And despite references to the march as a “riot” or “tantrum,” DC police did not make a single arrest all day. That is how you do a peaceful protest.
To be honest, I have not always been a feminist. In fact, I was one of the many who actually kind of resented feminists. I got into several arguments with my sister, debating that I was able to find a well-paying job right out of college, made the same amount as my male coworkers, and had never felt that being female had held me back in any way. Have I also mentioned that I grew up in a very small, insulated town, made money in high school by babysitting the children of wealthy white families, and was incredibly sheltered and unaware of the realities of the world? Imagine the smallest, most innocent, most doe-eyed child, and that was me. My mother reminded me the other day that at age 18, I told her I didn’t think sexism was a problem anymore, to which she gave me a sad little look and watched me go on my merry, not-yet-jaded way out into the world.
It wasn’t until I entered the workforce that I realized that being a woman, especially a young-looking one who has a tendency to be more reserved and is in a male-dominated field, does not do you any favors. I’ve had men who hold my same job responsibilities instruct me as if they are my supervisor. I’ve had men comment on what I am wearing while looking me up and down. I’ve gone into my first meeting with a new client and listened to them say, rather than shaking my outstretched hand, “you look like a high schooler!” while my coworkers broke into fits of hysterical laughter around me. Before I was hired for my new job, I was told that I would get paid $5000 less per year as the man they were replacing, my duties exactly the same as his, because he had been with the company for a year. Non-negotiable. I’ve had my male coworkers laugh at me when I explain my ideas, assume I cannot handle even the simplest of tasks, and speak over me in meetings. And yeah, it pisses me off.
I am a very privileged person. I had the opportunity to go to a good public school, work hard, go to a fantastic college, and get to choose between two job offers before I even graduated. I have had opportunities many women, and many men, could never even dream, and I am incredibly grateful for that. The fact that the doctors who were supposed to help me heal my injured ankle put in relatively little effort because they thought I was being hysterical is not quite enough for me to throw myself a feminist pity party each and every day. Because no, it is not productive.
The critics against any sort of feminist demonstration are men and women alike. It may at first seem surprising that so many women refuse to call themselves feminists, and are offended that anyone would associate them with feminist women, because feminist women are classless and play the victim. But I can understand in a way where they are coming from, because I once thought like this. These are people who grew up privileged, like me, or who recognize and have experienced first-hand that hard work reaps positive outcomes. Maybe they don’t want to feel bad for themselves, maybe they are happy within their own construct of being a wife to a breadwinning husband. Maybe they have had very little interaction with under-privileged single mothers who have trouble putting food on the table for their families, or sexual assault victims who are told to keep quiet to prevent ruining their assaulters’ lives. They may make the same amount or more as their male counterparts, but refuse to recognize that the burden of motherhood, combined with lack of access to affordable childcare and the fact that many companies do not offer paternal leave to relieve some of the burden, is a huge part of what contributes to the gap in average wages. These anti-feminists are happy with what they have, and see no need to ask for anything else.
And I’ve come to realize that just because hardships do not befall all, and just because you have not personally experienced discrimination and tribulations due to your race, gender, sexuality, or religion, does not mean they do not exist. You are lucky. To base all opinions on personal experience alone is naive and willingly close-minded.
The Women’s March on Washington began at 10 am in downtown DC, where crowds gathered around several well-known female activists who made speeches explaining what they were fighting for. I went downtown with my mom and sister with our pathetically uncreative sign (a product of one black Sharpie, a poster board from Wal-Mart, and five minutes spent Googling feminist sign quotes at 1 am), arrived right at 10, and was immediately smacked in the face with the shocking and delightful realization that there were not hundreds, not thousands, but hundreds of thousands of women downtown. We were pressed into the Metro like sardines, the car rife with knitted pink hats, my mom and sister the only thing distracting me from having a claustrophobic panic attack in the tight, sweaty space. Later we found out from WMATA that it was the second most crowded the DC Metro has been ever, right behind Obama’s Inauguration in 2009.
I don’t think I’ve ever been somewhere with so many people gathered at once (the marathons I’ve participated in don’t even come close, even though I was then in awe of how many people there were. Coming from a small town is not the most eye-opening way to grow up, let me tell you), and was literally giddy. Despite arriving downtown right when the rally started, we had no way of getting anywhere close to the speakers, so we ended up standing in a mass of people for hours. HOURS. Way more people than anticipated took to the streets, so many that we could not walk along the original route, and ultimately walked from the Capitol Building to the White House. And the best part was that a lot of it was surprisingly light-hearted, considering the relatively dark reasons it came to be. Gigantic blow-up Trumps floating through the air, signs alluding to his hair with “you can’t combover women’s rights,” and lots of chanting about Donald Trump being “really yucky” (because yes, he is). It was such an empowering, once-in-a-lifetime experience, and it was incredible being surrounded by SO many women and men alike, all united for the same cause.
And that cause is women’s rights, right? Sure. Having a president who has a history of demeaning, allegedly assaulting, and cheating on women, it is hard to feel like we are going to be represented effectively by this administration. But this march was about more than just American women. It was about all civil rights, regardless of gender, color, or class. It was about fighting racism, Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, and any other phobia you can think of that contributes to hate, the possibility of certain disenfranchised groups losing their rights or freedoms, or to the continually common trend of looking the other way when hate crimes are committed against the marginalized.
Why I decided to march, and some reasons I hope critics of the march take some time to think about:
Your religious freedom is not more important than my religious freedom. This is one of my strongest beliefs. Ever. I grew up without religion, and continue to live my life not answering to any particular god. From what I have seen, organized religion and the church are incredibly dangerous, and are used as excuses for bigotry and hatred. If you’re gay, you are a sinner, you will burn in hell, you need to be cured. God hates gays. If you’re pro-choice, you support the murdering of innocent babies, even relish in it. But a man is married three times, admits to committing adultery, and has enough ego and vanity for the entire country (I mean, he just declared his Inauguration to be a NATIONAL HOLIDAY, I shit you not), and it isn’t enough to dissuade many Christians from voting for him. What kind of religion is that? I appreciate true Christians who preach love and acceptance, but feel like religion is often times exploited and shed in an incredibly dishonorable light.
No one is pro-abortion. No one wants to get an abortion, or dreams of getting an abortion, or hopes to get an abortion at some point in her life. For a great majority of the women who go through with the procedure, the decision is the most difficult decision they have to make in their entire lives. It is emotionally traumatizing, it is painful, and it is expensive. And usually, the choice is made because the woman, who knows herself, what she is capable of, and her circumstances better than anyone else, has come to terms with the fact that she is not able to care for a child. With hundreds of thousands of children floating through the foster system, she doesn’t want to add another innocent to the mix. She cannot afford the health bills that come with giving birth, or she cannot carry the baby to term because doing so would risk her own health and life. But still, she is a murderer.
You can say you don’t want to pay for birth control because it is the fiscal responsibility of the birth control user, but that same argument could be applied to every other government program in the same way. Maybe it is solely the responsibility of the elderly and disabled to support themselves, so I don’t want to pay for social security. Maybe I work from home and don’t use the roads, so it isn’t my responsibility to pay for infrastructure. I don’t have kids, so it isn’t my responsibility to pay to help educate the youth of America. These arguments are ridiculous. A country cannot be great if the people in it are not given the opportunity to be healthy and educated. The combination of taking away access to birth control and defunding an organization that provides access to abortion (which is high on the administration’s priority list) is a recipe for disaster, just like completely doing away with these other government programs would result in chaos, with raised poverty rates, crime, and death. Being anti-choice and also anti-welfare are in such conflict with one another that you have to wonder if “pro-life” is about valuing human life, or about controlling women’s bodies. Females are not incubators. Treating them as such is sexist and dehumanizing.
Not everyone is a Christian. The presidential office has always been held by a Christian, but religious freedom, meaning the choice to practice any religion I want or the choice not to practice at all, is an inherent freedom. We are not a Christian nation, and there is no reason that, in a country where religious freedom is one of the most highly-regarded and valued Constitutional rights, one person’s religion should affect anyone else’s lifestyle. We marched to keep church separate from state.
The marginalization of immigrants and the treatment of refugees is disgusting.
It’s easy to forget what it’s like out in the world when you live in the cushy bubble of the United States, but that is no excuse to turn a blind eye to the suffering of non-Americans. The United States is the most powerful country in the world, and with that comes responsibilities that cannot be fulfilled by an entirely selfish, nationalist agenda. I’ve even seen many people on social media mentioning how hypocritical it is for us women in America to march when we are free, while women in other countries are killed every day for being women. These are the same people who would reel at the thought of inviting refugees from those countries in, because everything, including the lives of other human beings, is less important than closed borders and keeping Muslims, Mexicans, and anyone else out. A cluster of cells 8 weeks into pregnancy is a human, but a refugee child is not. Racial cleansing at its finest.
There is a photo circulating the Internet of a Muslim woman holding up this sign at one of the marches, making a statement that she is American too, even if she doesn’t fit the mold that Christian whites are desperate to keep in place. A white Christian man tweeted the photo, his caption “this is the scariest photo I have seen of the entire march!” She is Muslim, she is an American, practicing her freedom of religion just like everyone else, but somehow she is less American than that white Christian man. We marched for all Americans, not just the ones who were born here.
I’m sick of the double standards.
A few weeks ago, a white, disabled Trump supporter was kidnapped, tortured, and filmed by a group of anti-Trump black kids. Everyone knows about it. There was an uproar, and the kids were arrested immediately and are currently facing prison sentences. Truly a horrific incident, and the four black kids will get what they deserve.
Conversely, some white kids lured their black disabled football teammate into the locker room last month and violently raped him with a coat hanger after intimidating him with racial slurs. They all managed to avoid jail time, as the judge concluded that the incident was not a sex crime nor racially motivated.
I abhor violence so, so much (a residual effect of my sheltered childhood, perhaps), so I do not condone it EVER. But this kind of shit is far too typical. I started following journalist Shaun King on Facebook because he reports injustices against people of color that the mainstream media skillfully avoids. If you don’t pay attention to these, you may never know the extent to which racism is an issue. My ex-boyfriend literally once said to me that he doesn’t think racism is an issue in America anymore. People like him are what have led to the belief that Black Lives Matter is a terrorist organization because a small minority of them have resorted to violence and destruction, a conviction that fails or refuses to acknowledge that the movement was born from the unceasing, unpunished police brutality towards African-Americans. Calling all BLM activists terrorists is no different than saying all police officers are brutal racists. We marched to give voice to those who don’t feel like they have one, and who still do not receive fair treatment or compassion in this country today.
Rape culture.
Everyone knows the story of Brock Turner, and the corruption of it speaks for itself. If you don’t believe women are oppressed, just look at how this woman, along with thousands of others every day, face disbelief, victim blaming, and a total lack of justice for her suffering. Most sexual assaults are never reported, and this is why. No woman (or man) should feel ashamed of being violated, and we marched for them.
Trump. Just Trump.
And I do not even necessarily mean his policies when I say this, although it’s no secret that I am not a fan of those either (honestly, I loathe both him and his policies, let’s be real, but I’ll try to stay unemotional here). It is the fact that he changed his platform from a Democratic one to a Republican one, the fact that he has always been pro-choice but is now promoting an anti-choice agenda to please his supporters and to get into power by appealing to, as he himself has said, “the poorly educated”. I think this, and his other behaviors, including but not limited to bragging about grabbing females by the crotch at the ripe age of SIXTY, have done nothing but overwhelmingly demonstrate his complete lack of character.
He has refused to release his tax returns and has gaslighted half of America into believing that they are not important (though if that were the case, he wouldn’t feel like he had something to hide. And by the way, you can release your tax returns under audit. My mother is a CPA). His supporters are writing things online like “that will change :)” when someone expresses their appreciation for America’s diversity, and spray-painting swastikas beside his name all over the property of minorities across the country. It is bad. A man who has truly been working to unite a broken country and be a president for all would not have so many supporters who live with so much hate and intolerance and name him as their inspiration. He wouldn’t obsess over what’s going on on SNL and call those who did not vote for him “losers” and “enemies”. And he would recognize that the press’s role is to challenge the government, keep it in check, rather than considering removing press briefings from the White House. If he cared about less privileged Americans, he wouldn’t have already increased the burden on middle-class homeowners, nor would he want to cut taxes for the wealthy, nor would he be moving forward, once again, with the Dakota Access Pipeline in Standing Rock, nor would he gleefully praise Congress for voting to dismantle the ACA without any word of a replacement.
We’ve all heard the “give Trump a chance” spiel. We’ve heard that we are whiny and need to get over it already. And believe me, I want to see him do well. I really, really do. More than anything. I don’t think anyone wants to see this great country fall to shit. But supporting a man who is such a blatant liar, who surrounds himself with white nationalists and the unqualified, who has suggested putting Americans on a registry because of which religion they practice, who has multiple accusations against him, is impossible. I have morals, and he does not align with them. I personally wanted to march not because I don’t believe he won the White House fair and square, but because I want him to know that there are tons and tons of people watching, and we will not be happy if he doesn’t put the interests of America over the interests of his bank account.
I am a big fan of demonstrations like this. The number of people who came up to talk to us, just because we all have the same goals in mind, was inspirational. A popular criticism of the march was that it wasn’t going to do any good. It had no direction, it was a waste of time. Perhaps the message of the march was unfocused, considering the fact that before, during, and after people still cannot seem to understand what it was we were marching for. Asking the government to uphold our civil rights is not a tantrum. I resent the lack of motivation to understand. I resent the name-calling and disrespect just because a huge group of people wanted to peacefully exercise their first-amendment rights to promote equality. I resent the fact that people still think feminism is a man-hating movement. It is a good thing; it is the reason we can vote and get jobs and go to school today, and a president whose whole campaign was rooted in the ideal of going back in time does not promise exciting things for the future. We marched for all women, even the ones who don’t think they need it. I used to think I didn’t need it. But we all do.
The overall impact of the march, and the marches all around the world, has been enormous. There is no doubt that we were heard, we provided hope and gained hope, and we kick-started a movement that is letting our country’s administration know that we are loud and we won’t back down for anything.
