Eww weee, political catfighting

 

These days I am loathe to watch or read the news because it is so depressing. I do not feel the left has the infrastructure, strategy or energy to fight this decline of democracy happening in the US.* This morning's reading of The Guardian pushed this little thorn into my side: last week, the rightwing Conference on the State of Women and Family(CSWF) met in New York at the same time that the international rights' 69th Commission on the Status of Women met at the UN. What ensued that week was a horrific picture of women against women fighting. 

While the mouthpieces for CSWF state they love and respect women, their platform calls for a halt in global efforts to empower women with equal rights. Their platform takes pages from four leading far right groups, one of which is Project 2025 and the other, C-Fam, which has been designated a hate group from Southern Poverty Law Center.

The rights' attack on what they call 'gender ideology' and a destruction of family values is being fueled by blatant lies, homophobia, misogyny, and anti-intellectualism. They attack universities as spreading corrosive thoughts and corrupting women. They want women at home, obeying their husband acting as breeders and leaving the workplace upper echelon for men only. And women will not pursue higher learning not approved by male powers that be.

These manipulative strategies must be confronted on a personal level - woman to woman, family to family. It is going to take a multiracial ground swell of women in the US to see that aligning themselves with the far right is signing their rights away. 

Hey, I'm ready. If I could walk; well, I would be out in the streets burning my bra. Heck, I guess I could go in a wheelchair. But I need younger activists to do the organizing for me. I will support them, but I don't have ability to be on the front line like I was in the 80s. Women need to go back to the old ways of basic feminism 101 organizing. But this time we must have learned the lessons of class and race consciousness. The new woman's movement cannot be separate from racial and class struggles. We need to represent the majority of women. 

I could write here about the ludacris lies spread by far right organizers like Denise Mountenay. But please, I urge you to get informed yourself. Start with the Guardian article I linked above. Women everywhere need to be able to talk about these issues with the other women in their lives. We can never again lie complacent while middle class white women align themselves with the far right like they did in electing Trump.  We need a mass movement powered by one on one folks talking and working together. We cannot rely on the Democratic Party to do this. They have proved unreliable. Each individual woman must make it her mission to advocate for women's rights.

Talk with your sisters, talk with your friends. Educate yourself on women's history and our struggle for rights. Educate yourself on the needs of the majority of women in the US. We need to support our young women activists. Both young and old have much to teach each other.

This is me on my soapbox. Bad times are coming. We think they're bad now, but they're only going to get worse if there is no resistance, Do you want your daughters to be able to go to a university that has not been academically hobbled by the right? Do you want your nieces and friends to be able to have access to sex education, contraception and comprehensive healthcare? How about equality in the workplace? Do you want to have a voice in the governance of your own body and mind? Start where you can, Bring up conversations with friends, join an organization, contribute money, attend a protest. 

Just do something. And keep your eyes on the prize.

* Lest I end on a despairing note, I offer up this analysis that shows popular resistance is on the rise. Thank you to my friend S, who dropped this in my messages today.