ON DARKNESS, BETRAYAL, AND THE POWER OF SISTERHOOD

By Ann Menasche

This piece contains the opinions of the author and does not necessarily represent the collective views of Feminists in Struggle.

Many spiritual and religious traditions celebrate the dark, cold time of the year – winter solstice – by lighting candles, stoking a fire, and gathering close with loved ones.  We do so to help us survive this dark time and to remind us that after darkness comes the light.

The sadness for me this year is palpable.  We lost our beloved dog, Jaz, on December 9th.  And I can’t forget the state of the world that haunts me and disturbs my sleep: the relentless slaughter of the women and children in Gaza; the women in Afghanistan prisoners in their homes, denied work or study.  And closer to home, my homeless neighbors including a growing number of women – virtually all survivors of male violence -subsist crammed into government-sanctioned rat-infested camps, tents three feet apart, with no way to stay warm or dry.

And the state of our rights as women in the U.S. is abysmal.  Over 100 years after Alice Paul introduced the Equal Rights Amendment into the Constitution, we are still considered second class citizens, as first Trump, then Biden refused to register the duly ratified Amendment into the Constitution. This weakens our ability to fight to regain reproductive rights, to end violence against women, and to achieve equal pay and opportunity in the workplace for women. Meanwhile, trans activists are attempting to erase our sex class from existence in law and public policy so it will be impossible to name, measure, or remedy ongoing sexism.

Is it any wonder that so many young girls are attempting to “identify” out of their womanhood?

Then there is the bitterness of betrayal. Over the last several months, FIST joined with Equal Means Equal and became part of a broad coalition of organizations demanding that the Biden administration instruct the archivist to publish the ERA.  We recently learned that behind our backs, leaders of mainstream feminist organizations such as NOW and the Feminist Majority, supposed feminists and ERA supporters, were urging Biden not to publish the ERA.

How do we explain this treachery?  Is it their loyalty to the corporate dominated Democratic Party that while using women’s rights as a campaign slogan to win votes and donations, never had women’s best interests at heart?  Or do they really believe that the best way to fight for our rights is to be “ladylike” and polite, to not rock the boat?

I’m with Frederick Douglass who said in 1857, “Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation are people who want crops without ploughing the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning, the want the ocean without the roar of its many waters…Power concedes nothing without a demand.  It never did and it never will.”

I learned a lesson in courage and tenacity watching my sick dog with her back legs failing her, forcing herself up again and again and walking through the house, and up and down stairs.  No matter how many times she fell, she persisted, until she could no longer move at all.

Building movements takes that level of persistence, along with a recognition that when women unite, collectively we have the power to bring in the light, to change everything.  We have that power regardless of who is in the White House.

Like the women in Iran who against incredible odds, led (and will continue to lead) their people in a movement against theocracy proclaiming, “Women, Life, Freedom.”

Like our foremothers, the suffragists.  Women like Alice Paul and the Women’s Party that declared their independence from the patriarchy and its two political parties and were relentless in carrying out their struggle.

It took 100 years to win the vote, but we were not defeated.

 

 

 

 

 

Trump’s Threat to Women’s Rights & the ERA

The Equal Rights Amendment MUST Be Published Before Trump Takes Office!

In view of recent election results and, despite denials, the clear intention of the Trump Administration to implement Project 2025, which reads as a male supremacist manifesto, it is imperative that Biden reverse his obstructionism and instruct the National Archivist, Colleen Shogun, to publish the Equal Rights Amendment as the 28th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution.  The ERA has met all the legal requirements, having been ratified by ¾ of the states, the 38th of which, Virginia, ratified on January 27, 2020.  Women have been waiting for over a century for the ERA to first be passed by Congress, and then be ratified by the required number of states.

The National Archivist is a ministerial position under the Executive Branch, and Biden is the only person who can reverse the decision by the Trump Administration to unconstitutionally interfere with its automatic publication following ratification by the requisite states, and reverse his own administration’s continuation of the Trump obstructionism.  The ERA represents our best, and only, real bulwark against the tide of male supremacism Trump promises to deliver.

We acknowledge that biological women, as a sex class, have enemies on the Left and on the Right. The embrace and promotion of gender ideology on the Left and its erasure of women has been breathtaking, despite its utter lack of scientific evidence; its having been founded on junk science; its clear misogyny and homophobia in its exaltation of sexual stereotypes; its disregard for the safeguarding of children and legitimate concerns of parents; the willful blindness to the real harms of medicalization, and the corporate pharmaceutical money behind it; the pain of detransitioners and regretters; and total disregard of the infringement on the sex-based rights and safety of women and girls.

In addition, the cancel culture, McCarthyist repression of free speech and de-platforming of anyone questioning gender ideology and so-called “gender affirming care”, has exposed the authoritarian nature of this men’s rights movement, which has captured the Left, with rare exception.

Among other issues such as Gaza, the border, the disastrous handling of the exit from Afghanistan, concerns about the price of living, etc., the Biden Administration’s elevating the rights of trans-identified males over the rights of women and girls and the promotion of gender ideology was one of the reasons that the Presidential Democratic ticket lost the election to Trump.

In following the dictates of the TQ+ gender lobby, the Biden/Harris Administration and the Harris/Walz campaign ceded rational ground to the other enemies of women’s rights, the Christian nationalists and their MAGA allies, men’s rights activists, and other garden variety misogynists, who nevertheless know what a woman is and that there are only two sexes, observable at birth. Their adherence to this ideology contributed directly to Trump’s appeal and ultimate win, as this is an issue he plans to confront, some long-time Democrats even voting for him because they hope for some relative sanity to be restored in this regard.

The men’s rights activists insist that women are inferior, should cater to men, be subservient, and allow themselves to be sexually exploited. Some young incels and “bros” have been emboldened by Trump’s win to the extent that they are now exultantly proclaiming “Your body, MY choice!” in defiance of the abortion rights battle cry and women’s right to bodily autonomy and agency and in their zeal to dominate and control women’s lives and bodies.

The Christian Right, the other enemy of women’s sex-based rights, has embraced Trump as their champion and tirelessly devoted itself to his campaign, and has been greatly empowered by Trump’s win and takeover of Congress and the Supreme Court. It would like to not only turn women into handmaidens, but outlaw and criminalize abortion and also birth control, attempt to grant fetuses “personhood”, track women’s pregnancies and penalize miscarriages, do away with no-fault divorce, treat rapists with kid gloves and accuse victims of “false reporting”, end investigation of campus rape, penalize unmarried women, and generally return women to 1950’s America. The Christian Nationalists also take a very dim view of our federal government and welcome Trump’s plan to dismantle it.  The truth is, it aims to destroy our representative democracy, do away with the separation of church and state, and transform this country into a theocratic dictatorship. If you think this is an overstatement, please view the recently released documentary, “Bad Faith”, and prior to that, “The Family“. This is the enemy that will be in ascendance with Trump in power.

We call on all women and men who oppose tyranny and the destruction of the rights of natal women and girls to help us get the ERA finally published onto the Constitution in order to protect us from the twin threats of gender ideology and the religious right.  We have allies in Congress who have signed onto the resolutions, SJR 39 in the Senate, and HJR 82 in the House, which recognize that the only remaining step for the ERA to become law is publication, and that it is up to Joe Biden to finally take this step to ensure that all the hard-won rights women have fought for, including voting rights, abortion rights, contraception, equal pay, no-fault divorce, owning property, obtaining credit in one’s own name, safe spaces, sports, etc. are not rolled back. The ERA would ensure that women cease to be treated as second-class citizens before the law, and would have prevented Roe being overturned.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, the sponsor of SJR 39, is hosting a virtual Town Hall on the ERA on this coming Tuesday, December 3rd at 4 PM PDT, 7 PM EST and we need supporters of the ERA to register now and attend! We also need you to call these Senators and U.S. Representatives and direct them to apply pressure to Biden to publish and text Biden at 302-404-0880 and Harris at 310-861-2977.

The time is NOW!  We cannot let the efforts of our First Wave Feminist forebears like Alice Paul’s efforts to be in vain.  Sign up for the Town Hall and start calling and writing these representatives and the White House, remind them on social media, and don’t stop until Biden makes the call to the National Archivist and gets the ERA in the Constitution!

URGENT ACTION RE ERA

It has been nearly a century since the first version of the Equal Rights Amendment, known as Lucretia Mott Amendment, was introduced in Congress, and almost 50 years since it finally was passed by both houses in 1972.  Many of us marched in support of the ERA and our hope was renewed in recent years when groups like Equal Means Equal joined the fight to get it ratified by the remaining three states.  Nevada ratified in 2017, Illinois in 2018, and Virginia in 2020, finally giving us the 38 states needed to ratify a constitutional amendment.
Then Trump’s Attorney General William Barr sent a memo to the National Archivist, David Ferriero, telling him not to publish the ERA to the Constitution, and though Joe Biden and Kamala Harris both claimed they support the Equal Rights Amendment and many women voted for them expecting them to act, the Biden Administration has made no effort to revoke this egregious abuse of authority or direct the Archivist to publish the ERA. Biden should have done this his first day in office and today he has now been in office for 3 months and he still has not done so.
Therefore, we are asking that you help us exert pressure on Biden and Harris for the next 30 days to honor a century of struggle for equal rights for women by publishing the ERA.  Here is what we’re asking you to do:
1) Send a postcard every day for a month to the White House demanding that they REMOVE the Barr memo and direct the archivist to publish the ERA (stamped postcards=$12 for 30. One trip to the Post Office; 29 trips to one’s mailbox) with the message: WOMEN HAVE WAITED NEARLY A CENTURY FOR OUR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS.  REMOVE THE BARR MEMO AND DIRECT THE ARCHIVIST TO PUBLISH THE ERA NOW!!  The address is:  President Joe Biden/Vice-President Kamala Harris, The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, D.C. 20500.2) Call 2-3 female Senators per day (18 Democrats; 2 moderate Republicans), 3 times (10 days to go through the list at 2 per day) and urge them to demand that the White House publish the ERA.  Here is a list of women senators and their phone numbers to call.  They are all Democrats who should definitely support the ERA except for two moderate Republicans (Susan Collins from Maine and Lisa Murkowski from Alaska) whom we believe are in favor of equal rights for women. We have included their states as well–if you are a constituent of theirs, please emphasize that; let them know you are contacting them because as women you hope they care about women’s rights as much as you do and let them know that you are calling on behalf of all the women in your state and the U.S.

3) Join us on social media–especially Twitter @FeministStruggl (follow us and retweet)–as we can directly tweet to @WhiteHouse, @POTUS, @KamalaHarris @VP @JoeBiden to call out the Biden Administration on their neglect of women’s constitutional rights and obstructionism and demand that they remove the Barr memo and direct the Archivist to publish the #ERANow!!

4) Go to May Day for the ERA at Equal Means Equal and sign up for the livestream to hear Wendy Murphy’s legal argument on May 5th.

Thank you very much for doing all you can for women to finally achieve equality under the law.  We are tired of being second-class citizens and demand our full constitutional rights!!