Pat Taub
The gloves are off. The war on women is official. The system has discounted women. After tireless weeks of women protesting legal abortion opponent Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to be a Supreme Court justice, he was confirmed.
Women poured their hearts out, flooding Senators’ offices in D.C. and in their home states with phone calls and visits. Peaceful female protesters were arrested by the hundreds. Women shared long-buried stories of sexual abuse in support of Dr. Ford’s charge that Kavanaugh had attempted to rape her. In the end it didn’t seem to matter.
Protestors rally against Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh in the atrium of the Hart Senate Office Building, Oct. 4, 2018
All eyes were on Senator Susan Collins, whose vote had the potential to defeat Kavanaugh. Women tied up Collins’ phone lines and held sit-ins in her office, urging her to vote against Kavanaugh. Collins stalled, raising hopes that she’d vote against him, but just hours before the Senate voted on Kavanaugh Collins delivered a rambling speech in support of him. Columnist Charles Pierson has dubbed Collins a “Gender Judas.”
Susan Collins delivering her Senate speech defending her vote for Kavanaugh for which she’s been called a “Gender Judas.”
Women are newly energized to take on a system, which has turned on them. How dare Susan Collins insist that Dr. Ford’s testimony of Kavanaugh’s attempted rape was lacking in facts when the rushed FBI investigation didn’t even interview Dr. Ford? How dare Mitch McConnell characterize women’s massive non-violent protests as “an angry mob?”
How dare Trump mock Dr. Ford and suggest we need new libel laws to punish protesters? How dare the old white men on the Judiciary Committee make Dr. Ford responsible for “ruining Brett Kavanaugh’s life” when she continues to receive death threats and remains in hiding?
Understandably many women are depressed at the prospect of having Roe v. Wade overturned, but time is of the essence. We don’t have the luxury to wallow in our depression. We have to convert our disappointment and anger into feet on the street. We have to mobilize to elect progressive candidates that support women’s rights. Simultaneously we have to help one another emerge from this set back. Hug your friends, comfort them, cry with them, hear their stories, and tell your story. Exchange vows not to be silenced.
Soraya Chemley, author of Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger writes that conservatives’ biggest fear since the “Me Too” movement is that women are telling the truth.
“And if women are telling the truth,” Chemaly notes, “then it’s not just an indictment of a few bad apples, but an indictment of the entire system.”
Women dressed as handmaids as depicted in the novel, “The Handmaid’s Tale” where women’s bodies are controlled by the state.
Thenmozhi Soudarajan, executive director of the South Asian social justice organization, “Equality Labs” offers this observation:
“They think they’re winning but they have basically ignited a movement that’s never going to go away.”
Young women who took abortion rights for granted have found their voices. Older feminists have dusted off the cobwebs from 1960’s protests in support of abortion rights. It was heart-warming to see women of all ages, races and economic classes and sympathetic men swarm into Washington to register their opposition to Kavanaugh.
Women raising the power signal during DC protests against Kavanaugh.
Amanda Nguyen, founder of the national civil rights nonprofit “Rise” and creator of the “Sexual Assault Survivors Bill of Rights” and herself a rape survivor, offers this encouragement:
“Many survivors and allies are feeling discouraged, but I have seen firsthand what steadfast perseverance in the face of injustice can do. We will continue our work so that no one else experiences the same struggles I faced.”
“If this is the battle they want to choose, they’re going to lose the war.”
