The Women’s March
I should go back a little ways and talk about my husband, and the journey we’ve taken together to get here. My husband was raised to be a die-hard Republican. When he was a kid, his dad told him that liberals would come and take all of his toys in the night while he was sleeping. He wasn’t necessarily anti-feminist when we started dating, or we’d never have made it this far, but he did believe a lot of the bad PR surrounding feminism.
But he was rational, and loving a woman and a feminist, combined with his rationality, took him pretty far all on it’s own. We’ve talked a lot about my life experiences, as a woman. He’s seen some things, and he’s listened to what I had to say about others, and he’s gone out and investigated more of them after our discussions.
So I’ve thought of him as a feminist for a long time, even though he’s never come right out and claimed the label before. He’s stood up for my autonomy, even when what he wanted was to protect me, and when my mom asked him to look after me, he told her that I do a good job looking after myself.
That’s the man who put on a pink pussy hat with me on Saturday morning, and then proudly told a reporter from our home town newspaper that he wanted to wear it to be visible as a feminist man, and that being a feminist is a moral imperative.
You can see the article here.
We also got a chance to attend a reception for the Vermont marchers hosted by Senator Leahy.
It was great to see so many folks from Vermont show up to march. There were literally hundreds of people at the reception. There was still a line out the door when we left to head over to the rally spot. There were also 15-20,000 people at the march in Montpelier. It sounds small compared to other marches in other states, but that alone is over 2% of our entire population. And they had to close three highway off ramps, so I’d bet money there’d have been more people there, if they could have fit.
Hubby, of course, was thrilled to have his picture taken with the man who stood up to The Joker.
We started spotting women in pink pussy hats in cars and then in rest stops in New Jersey. It started to feel like a pilgrimage, in a way, though I know it’s easy to feel solidarity when you’re a white woman and feminism has never treated you like an outsider.
I was really glad that the march brought out many women who face oppression from multiple angles. It wasn’t perfect, and I’ve been reading and digesting the articles that talk about the things we need to do better as a community in the future. For myself, I firmly believe the solution is to put all of my effort into helping those who face more marginalization than I do. Not only is it the right thing to do, but it puts us in touch with people in our communities we wouldn’t otherwise know, and the more we are connected to people who are different from us, the more those bonds help us to make the world better for everyone. The divisiveness I keep hearing white people complain about is a natural consequence of not seeing the reality that other people experience in a world that shields us from so many forms of oppression.
