Sunday, October 09, 2016

Heroes who took on the big babies


As we watch Trump (and the Republican Party) implode since the release of the tape of him gloating over sexual assault, how about a shout-out to some of the millions of women (and some men) who've put themselves in the line of fire to make powerful men's entitlement to women's bodies an unacceptable claim?

In no particular order:
  • Planned Parenthood workers: who literally put themselves in the line of fire to ensure women receive basic health services.
  • Nafissatou Diallo: New York City hotel maid who dared charge the head of the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, with rape. Sure, she turned out to want to make what cash she could out to the encounter, but hey, she needed the money and Strauss-Kahn, being smarter than Trump, was willing to pay up to avoid having his sexual exploits dragged out in court.
  • Brock Turner's accuser who blew out the injustice system's circuits by demanding that a Stanford swimmer should suffer for "20 minutes of action" for humping a passed out female stranger. Let's also remember the two male Swedish student passersby who interrupted Mr. Turner's little party.
  • Then there's Gamergate, a Twitter and social media kerfuffle in 2014, during which the deplorables on the alt-right web tried to drive women such as video game developers Zoë Quinn and Brianna Wu out of their cozy electronic man cave. Sexual shaming was their means; solidarity was the only defense.
  • Hey, remember the crap my friend Renee Bracey Sherman takes every day for campaigning for women to be able to have safe, affordable abortions without guilt.
  • For that matter, remember the crap Anita Hill took for calling out her boss, that would be silent Justice Thomas, for "sexual harassment". Her courage gave us language with which we talk about this stuff. Before her, sexual harassment was just what men in power did.
This list is just what I came up with in a random half hour. Millions of people, mostly but not all women, have got us to where Trump's behavior is no longer just normal. Please leave additional names of women who changed our standards about what big baby men can do to us in the comments.

2 comments:

amspirnational said...

http://www.feministsforlife.org/

Women have a right to kill female babies, often for selfish capitalist instincts?
You vitiate your other arguments.

But speaking of Trump, Bill Clinton's rape accusers far outnumber Trump's grope accusers.
So let's elect the woman abuser's protector, the Cold Warrioress Goldwater Girl who also wants to continue outsourcing jobs until we have a One Hemisphere race to the bottom, who also wants to continue overthrowing secular Arab governments, eg Iraq, Libya and Syria, while inviting the jihadi refugees in, who wants to provoke Putin into war?

Hattie said...

Feminists for life. Ha ha.