Women in History, Women Today, Women in the Trump Era

From Meredith Brooks' "Bitch".

Image source: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/23918343018153590

As I posted this week on Twitter, September 18th-24th marks a number of notable historical events involving women. This week in 1975, heiress and kipnapping-victim-turned-Symbionese-Liberation-Army participant Patty Hearst was captured by police in San Francisco. On September 20, 1986, the TV show Cagney & Lacey won an Emmy Award for Best Show (Windell 2015). The show was about two women detectives who worked for a police department in a large city, and dealt with issues like alcoholism, harassment of women, and death of a fellow officer. Also on September 20 but in 1973, tennis legend Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs in the highly publicized "Battle of the Sexes". (A movie of the same name is coming soon to movie theaters everywhere.) On September 21, 1981 Sandra Day O'Connor was confirmed as the first female Supreme Court justice by the U.S. Senate. She would ultimately serve 24 years on the bench. On September 22, 1692, the last eight 'witches' were hanged in Salem, Massachusetts (Windell, 2015). Most (not all) of the arrested and executed witches were women. Also on September 22, 1975, a would-be female assassin, Sara Jane Moore, attempted to kill President Ford (Windell, 2015). 

Fast forward to present day, two weeks ago Hillary Clinton's account of her 2016 bid for the Presidency, What Happened, was released. I'm currently on p.121 (348 more pages to go). I heard about the book first, with the predictable framing on both sides. Always better to read something for oneself than to take others' words for it. Example: Counter to what some conservative pundits are saying, Clinton doesn't blame everyone else for her loss, but accepts her fair share of responsibility for things that went wrong. 

In Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman, author Anne Helen Peterson (2017) notes that after Clinton's unexpected defeat, she sat down to write an article tentatively titled "This is How Much America Hates Women" (p.x), which would eventually evolve into a book (Too Fat...). I don't think America hates women per se. (We make up half the population of the U.S., after all.) But I do think that those who've traditionally been in the dominant gender group (i.e., men) don't really know what to make of women. We are wives, mothers, and daughters. We're coworkers (probably paid less). We're pioneers, sports champions, outlaws and victims. As Meredith Brooks sings in "Bitch", "I can understand how you'd be so confused, I don't envy you, I'm a little bit of everything all rolled into one...."

As the filmmaker Michael Moore satirically observed in his blog post "Five Reasons Why Trump Will Win", "Our male-dominated, 240-year run of the USA is coming to an end. A woman is about to take over! How did this happen... and now, after having had to endure eight years of a black man telling us what to do, we’re supposed to just sit back and take eight years of a woman bossing us around?" Is that really what men think? That if put in charge we'll boss them around and take their toys and not share? Because that's what they've done to us all these years so now it's payback time? Really??

I didn't vote for Donald Trump, but accept that he's the President. "Give him a chance," I've been told by one of the many men in my life (men I like and consider good friends). I'm trying. Like many women, I haven't forgotten POTUS's famous "Grab 'em by the p*ssy" comment. Why this doesn't offend all women deeply I still don't understand, but I also accept that not everyone has to think like me. Also, Mr. Trump isn't the first Pig in Chief we've had in the White House; he's just the most unapologetic about it. Bill Clinton was a pig. JFK was also a pig about women. (White House intern Mimi Alford wrote a book about her affair with President Kennedy, including that she gave Appointments Secretary David Powers a blowjob on the President's instruction, with JFK in the room.) Many men in my life -- men I consider to be good people, (mostly) non-sexist -- voted for Trump and still (mostly) like him. They assure me that terrible things for women aren't coming with Trump as President, and I try to believe them. I try. But I'm still waiting and watching.