All Girls & Women Revolt
A little over two months ago an estimated 4,600,000 people marched for women’s rights. Women and men peacefully assembled and protested inequality. It’s been two months of opposition. Two months of phone calls to our Senators. Two months of the #resistance. And I‘m afraid to tell you, friends, it seems as though we are losing steam. But I beg you not to. Do not slow down. Do not back away. We need to keep resisting.
Reminder: None of this is normal.
A few days ago, President Trump signed an executive order revoking President Obama’s “Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces” executive order. President Obama’s order required paycheck transparency and banned forced arbitration clauses for sexual harassment, sexual assault, or discrimination. This is important.
Two months ago, President Trump reinstated and expanded the “global gag” rule. This executive order cuts $9.5 billion from organizations that provide AIDS and malaria treatment and care, as well as maternal and child care. This is important.
And then, we are constantly subjected to the everlasting debate about what women can and cannot do with their own bodies. Just last year, our VP Mike Pence signed a law that requires women seeking an abortion to get an ultrasound at least 18 hours before the procedure. And a quick Google search for abortion laws yields a plethora of terrifying results. New, dangerous anti-abortion laws are signed weekly. This is important and alarming.
When two months ago both men and women criticized those of us who marched for doing so “without a purpose,” I understood. I understood why so many were confused by the March. I understood; I did not agree.
We marched not only because our equality is a simple mirage, but because we sensed what was coming. We knew the future, because we remembered the past. You see, we actually listened to the campaign promises. We took them as truths. We did not go into this presidency full of hope, but instead full of fear and uncertainty.
And here we are, watching it all unravel. Watching our country rapidly move backwards. Watching our rights vanish. Who needs laws protecting women in the workplace anyway? Remember when so many cried it is illegal to discriminate against women in the workplace; hence there is no need to march for such “nonsense”? Thanks to President Trump, the line between what is and isn’t legal is starting to blur, with a few strokes of his pen.
I can tell many of you are getting weary. I can see some of you are starting to accept this all as the new norm. Do not. You must stop and you must wake up again. And I happen to know something that may help. Go watch Good Girls Revolt on Amazon and you’ll be woke again.
If you have not yet discovered Good Girls Revolt do yourself a much needed solid and binge unapologetically. Good Girls is exactly what we need right now. Set in the 1960s and ’70s, the show is about women working as researchers in a major print publication called News of the Week. The organization clearly discriminates against its female workers by not allowing them to be reporters. The men are the reporters while the women do the heavy lifting.
“They’re reporters, we’re researchers. We report, investigate, and write files for the reporters; they do a pass on them, put their names of them, and then the stories go to press,” Patti (our protagonist) explains.
Eventually, the women of Newsweek ban together and file a lawsuit against the publication. They put it all on the line for their future and the future of those who will come after them. Glued to each episode, I notice the remnants of that oppression in today’s world.
We forgot, and some of us never knew, how easy it is for the government to take away basic civil rights from its citizens. We forgot how simple it is to oppress and marginalize groups of people. Many of us got so privileged and we forgot. Good Girls Revolt reminds us. We are reminded that not so very long ago women weren’t allowed to sign a lease without their husband’s permission. We are reminded that not so very long ago companies denied opportunities to women, men openly sexually harassed women in the workplace (and everywhere), women were used rather than respected as employees, and abortions had to be performed in secret. We have forgotten.
We need Good Girls Revolt to remind us. We need a reminder that it doesn’t take the entire country, but only one small group of people fed up with the current status quo. All it takes is a few people organized enough and loud enough and resilient enough to start a revolution.
Don’t get tired. Keep fighting.
