‘Remember the Ladies’: Attacks on Gender Equity Remain a Core Feature of Surging Authoritarianism

In the whirling, swirling hellscape of illegality and cruelty that is the current American political scene, it’s hard to keep track of all the individuals and groups demonized, deported and derided by an administration seemingly motivated by a Machiavellian desire for power that might make Machiavelli himself blush with shame. In the midst of an apocalyptic news cycle, one targeted segment of the population seems to be fading from view: women.

But let us not, as Abigail Adams wrote so many years ago, forget the ladies. “Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could.”

Subject: Man. Object: Woman. Verb? Control.

Subject: Man. Object: Woman. Verb? Control

It is not simply or only “hatred” that motivates the sexists of the world, but the very desire to define and therefore to control. 

It’s then easy to see how attacks on reproductive rights are connected with the prevalence of sexual assault and harassment: Because if women are fully self-determined—can determine when and if they have children, when and with whom they have sex—then they cannot be there, fully, inevitably, without their own desire, for you. For a man. 

Women and Children First

Women—often young women and more often than not women of color—are assuming the leadership of modern movements for intersectional social justice. These are not the fantasies of a fervent feminist. These are just the facts.