The War on Women and Children

So, here is what it is like. I was a teenage feminist, despite a mom who really was not exactly a feminist. I struggled to leave a home with an abusive, alcoholic brother who my parents did not protect me from — and I rarely discuss this publicly. I escaped through education. I grew up and worked for Ms. Magazine and in the arts.

I sought solace in spirituality and poetry. I struggled to leave a violent marriage. I endeavored to leave an oppressive, abusive Orthodoxy, in large part because my daughter begged me. The damage to our lives from this patriarchal community has been enormous.

We had a couple of good years of freedom. And now we are suddenly living in a country ruled by misogyny, a Pre-World War II sensibility, as if Feminism didn’t revolutionize our world. As if we learned nothing from the Holocaust. A world where the men and women who hate women stole the Presidency from the most qualified candidate our country has ever known and handed it to an ugly-souled monster – make that plural.

Millions of Feminists marched. Our President and his lapdogs were obnoxious and questioned the legitimacy of our outrage. He didn’t even have the decency to specifically acknowledge the voices of so many women speaking and marching against him, against his rhetoric, behavior, and policies.

He wants to cut funding for Violence Against Women programs. He wants to undermine our children’s education and defund healthcare for women and girls. It was never just locker room talk. It was always his raison d’etre, his plan.

And now the Republican Senate just ordered a woman, a United States Senator, who battled chauvinism and earned the votes of her constituents, to sit down and shut the ^@&# up. Because she was reading the words of a woman who stood on the front lines for civil rights.

I cannot stand their lies, their abuse and rape of women and children, their usurpation of our power, their desire to control our bodies and our minds.

As long as I live I will fight this. Some how, some way. I will do this for me, for my daughter, for all the generations to follow. I will get up and open the blinds on the days I want to stay under the covers.

Because, make no mistake, they want to flood and overwhelm us. They want to call truth lies and lies truth. Classic pedophile-abuser, misogynist strategy.

We are a country engaged in an Uncivil War. Last night they made ever more clear the battle line. The first step, as anyone who has ever studied Torah or poetry knows, is naming it.