Friend -
👨🏼 We know MAGA (formally known as the GOP) is going to say all the hateful, bad, wrong-minded, super false, Q-anon-y things, & when progressives do it, it’s almost more upsetting. Whether asking for equal representation, a Barbie nomination sweep, loving Taylor Swift or wanting bodily autonomy, 2024 has so far been all about excoriating women, belittling their opinions & denying their ability to engage in both/& thinking. As if they’re ill-equipped or should be disallowed from joining any discourse that is about something they love for themselves. As if saying, this makes me happy, is a homing device for any agenda to zero in on & attack.
🦸🏻♀ What The…!? — I don’t know who needs to hear this (well, actually I do, but we say that in this passive-aggressive me, me, meme world, don’t we), but listen up all of you who need this absolute truth (spoiler alert, it’s everyone): women *can* have it all, & by Themysicra they can *ask* for it all.
🤔 Sometimes I like to sit back & imagine a world where women & nonbinary people can ask for the gold ring, the top rung, the big dollar, the captain’s chair without being pushed into the wood-chipper of life, spit out, set on fire, fire-hosed, pecked by vultures, composted, raked through the topsoil & then told to put themselves back together by dinner. The one they’ll make.
🚮 It’s almost as if women aren’t valued in our society. As if they were meant only to be seen, but not too seen, & they definitely aren’t meant to be heard, unless spoken to, & only then without too much or too little emotion. (Am I doing this right, Gloria? IYKYK.) In this modern world, women endure everything they always have plus some. They’d better not ask for too much or they’ll be pelted with the systemic shaming response from people & places they thought they could trust. This is partly why they still can’t get equal pay for equal work, still can’t decide for themselves whether or not they want to carry a pregnancy, viable or not, to term, even if it kills them; they’re still not safe walking home alone at night, but that’s their fault for walking in that body, & if that body isn’t white or gender-specific, all the more to blame; & now there’s the bonus of not being safe in digital spaces as well. If they are victims of rape, doxxing, AI porn, toxic loser male revenge porn, or any other sort of attack, it’s their fault. If they try to take control of their sexuality, that’s wrong too, because it’s shameful if they like sex, want sex, or have sex. Even though, at the same time, what else are they good for?
🫨 Women are not only required to endure, they are also meant to just get over all the inequality & double standard insanity that happens to them every single day, especially if they want any control over what decisions are made about their bodies or how they should use them, in public or private. Piled on top of that, they sure as hell better never ask for more than 1 small step for Womankind at a time. But, also, if they do get one small step, they daren’t celebrate that too much, because then they’re just a bunch of narcissists even tho that dude went by him, or if they are a victim of any of the many forms of online or real-world harassments & abuses, jesusfuckingchrist, you whining bitches (their words, not mine), STFU & get over it. That’s how the Patriarchy, Pat for short, speaks to women, yet somehow they’re the shrill ones. Just be quiet & participate in “equality” the way Pat wants you to. Go get a full-time job where you’re paid less than Pat’s buddies, have all Pat’s babies, forced & otherwise, & do this without proper access to birth control, affordable childcare, or healthcare. Also, do all the nurturing, homemaking, cooking, cleaning, caregiving & emotional labor that a true head of household does, but then sit back quietly while your husband claims that title on your taxes, that, oh, btw, you’ll fill out.
🔂 This thing being said & said & said & SAID about women deserving equality shouldn’t be aspirational. It should be concrete. Factual. An autonomic response of an evolved species unable to exist without the very ones they claim need strict father figures in every facet of their lives in order to correctly nurture those very same father figures. Women don’t need to be thrown over the lap of Uncle Sam & spanked into submission. Yet here we are in 2024, for crying out loud, & the MAGA-stapo are trying to write legislation for a forced-birth nation that encourages honor killings of women who abort a fetus via miscarriage, medical necessity, or through their own freaking choice, which would be called freedom if men were capable of bearing the pain of reproduction. Lobbying for the imprisonment or execution of women who abort fetuses is nothing if not terrorism.
🏄🏽 Feminism is talked about as something that comes in waves. The chroniclers say we are in our 4th wave give or take a splash or 2. Meanwhile, Pat is still living it up in OG land. He’s the one & only version of himself. He’s never been updated, downgraded, or boxed & put on a shelf, where he belongs, behind the equity & cleaning supplies he rarely uses. Thus, we keep finding ourselves reinventing, questioning & shifting our demand for that all too obvious but all too elusive quality, equality. It’s no wonder when you’re forced to operate within the very structure that was built to keep you out — or in, depending, of course, on what Pat wants.
🌊 For now Pat owns the land, so we must be the ocean that surrounds it. The rising tide. They’ve always told us that the eye of the storm is calm, but as usual, the story is incomplete: over land, the eye of the storm is eerie and quiet; it demands silence. But over the ocean the eye is fierce & loud, the waves stronger & mightier than any man. Even so, we find ourselves constantly being forced to ride unpredictable tides & if we topple over, we’re ridiculed, even tho the most experienced surfers end up off their boards. It’s time to pool together because what’s coming November 5th isn’t about which old white dude we want, but which future we want to exist in. It’s time to wash out that low road & join Michelle on higher ground. And, as we get into formation, as we work in collaboration to figure out how to knit together these waves, editing out what needs cut, adding in what was left out, we have to make certain we aren’t doing the work with Pat’s tools — that needling, that constant scolding & sharp reminders, those singular threads — because if we do, as F. Scott said, we’ll beat on boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
✌🏼Lately, I’ve been dressing for revenge,
Dc Lozano, Poli-Digitial Director & Loser of Sleep
