Today, listening to the news again, I am surprised to find it all so familiar, a variation on a theme. The theme is the years before World War II. When I see the faces of the enraged policemen, in a trance of murderous dominance, I see the SS, the Nazi party members, the Gestapo. I recognize these men as the human embodiments of deep hatred and a distinct lack of empathy. They are both trained and conditioned by our culture of masculinity, the films, the sports, everything from circumcision on up to deny empathy, and value competition and delight in brutality.
Dialect and class. Some of my friends who are in fact not racist, and would say they were not racist, still have the strangest reflections on what they see on the news. When I say 'the news' I mean CNN, MSNBC, BBC WORLD NEWS. My friends all talk about how even "high level" African Americans can't speak the language properly. To one of them, today, I said, "well it is an accent, like being from New England, or Texas. Or even more clearly like in England, the difference between the English of someone in Liverpool, and that of a Northumberland. What someone might find charming in a Scots accent, they find inferior in another.
That said, I can remember in my early teens, making a conscious decision to change my speech. I stopped saying 'ain't' which was common to all I knew when I grew up. I stopped saying 'youse' for the plural, as in the south people say 'yawl' both groups not seeming to have learned that 'you' can speak of many not just one.
Still back to history. The sides are becoming so firm now. One side believes all Americans deserve the same civil rights and protections. The other side believes white people are superior to other shades and should get preferential treatment - the white supremacists (like the Nazi party). The 'Republican' side which represents this view, also believes women should be pushed back into a more inferior and dependent position.
The main improvement in our lives, 'women's' lives, have been the vote, and birth control, and of the two, birth control is the most important. Race isn't the only issue here, in this newest rendition of the revolution, Gender is the twin of race.
Women have been an exploited and oppressed class all over the world for millennia. Childbirth is the major stumbling block to a woman's independence. Once you are pregnant, you are dependent on help. We need to be able to control reproduction until we get more independent and ready to care for ourselves, on our own. So far as I can see, you need an education, most of the time, in order to get into a position where you could take off as much time from work as you need for childbirth, and still pay your bills. That is kind of a bare minimum for a woman alone with a baby. It is much easier to get an education and follow a career if you are not pregnant or mother of a baby, child or children. To take away this necessity, is to hobble us.
Democrats, or left wing, we want freedom of choice for women in regard to all forms of birth control. We want equality in law and in behavior in regard to the police for all people, people of color, people who are female.
Domestic abuse is sexism in action. The urge toward domination, overpowering others, while repressing any empathy for others is the root of domestic abuse, racism and most forms of violence towards other people as well as towards other species.
We need more good women in power to bring back balance in the world. There was a good column on that subject in the Sunday NYTimes by Nicholas Kristof, "Nations May Be Safer Under Women" pg. 9. He gives the data on the countries that suffered fewer deaths by percentage of the population from coronavirus. The top ten were nations with women leaders: New Zealand,, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Norway, and Taiwan for example. And could anyone really say that Boris Johnson has done a better job than Margaret Thatcher? The male leaders that did the worst job were all "authoritarian, vainglorious, blustering such as Jair Bolsonaro, Ayatollah Khamenei and Donald Trump to name just three. We could add Putin.
Such troubled times and sometimes knowing history makes it even more frightening. I have seen the face of the right wing in old documentaries of Germany in the late 1930's. But change always makes new and unpredictable consequences. We can still hope.
Happy Trails
Jo Ann
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