Women: Stop the Machine
By Beth Ann Huber; Published in The Zero Point
This is not just about abortion.
I’m going to let you in on a secret: Every woman in your life has at least one story of oppression at the hands of a man or men. No, not just a few of us. Each and every one of us. Whether she is lesbian, straight, bi, trans, heavier, lighter, tall, short, younger, older, dark or fair, every woman in your life has felt that fear or shame or discomforting pit of danger in her stomach. Whether she is she or they are they, they have been at the wrong end of others not seeing them as human, much less equal.
It is so insidious that the offense may have happened right in front of you and you didn’t notice. You didn’t see her eyes lose focus while her thoughts moved inward in an attempt to protect her dignity. You didn’t notice her hands casually move to her bag, always on the ready to pull out one of many implements of defense that are constantly within. Do you know the best way to hold your car keys? Probably not. And you probably didn’t see their slight raise of shoulders when they felt the eyes on them that you would never notice. Because we can always feel the eyes.
And it’s not just the mansplaining — though, let’s be real here, there’s a lot of mansplaining. So much so that the kindest and most loving men engage in it when they’re not thinking. And it’s not just the “idea theft” either — though, we’ve all had our male co-workers or group-mates come up with the same idea we just had, only five minutes later. Oooo…brilliant, Rob…wish I’d’ve thought of that…oh wait… And it’s not just the over-visibility or in-visibility — though, women know that most men can’t take their eyes off us when we’re young and pretty but somehow can’t see or hear us when we’re not. But it’s not just about these seemingly minor affronts.
It’s also not just about the big affronts either — though those should shock you to the core. The fact that, of the women you know, 1 out of every 5 of us has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape. Of those, 1 in 3 happened to girls aged 11–17. 97% of us who are aged 18 to 24 and 70% of the rest of us have been sexually harassed in a public space. In. A. Public. Space. Just like it was normal, expected, an absolute right. Would you punch your buddy in the face on a public sidewalk? Probably not. But sexually harassing your buddy’s teenaged daughter in the middle of the school fair? Fair play.
Or sit with this: An average of 3 women per day in the United States are murdered by their intimate partners. Additionally, 1 in 3 women experience some form of physical violence from an intimate partner at some point in their lifetime, and 1 in 4 experience extreme violence (strangling, burning, beating). Elder women are more likely to be the victims of elder abuse (verbal and physical) than their male counterparts, and nearly 79% of the victims of human trafficking are young girls.
But it’s not just about any of those things.
It’s about all of those things. One indignity after another after another. One excision of a piece of our souls followed by another and another. Every day. 365 days a year. For a lifetime. The mansplaining that just happens to follow the construction site whistle that just happens to follow the eye-bruising cover-up in front of our own bathroom mirror. And our co-worker has no idea why we flew into a rage when he told us to “Just calm down.”
This is not just about abortion. It’s just about abortion right now.
What do all these affronts, major and minor, have in common? It’s this: That our bodies and minds and souls are not ours. They’re yours. They’re yours to do with as you please.
Isn’t that right, Mr. Alito? You own my morality?
Isn’t that right, Mr. Gorsuch? You own my history?
Isn’t that right, Mr. Kavanaugh? You own my mind?
Isn’t that right, Mr. Thomas? You own my body?
Isn’t that right, Mrs. Coney-Barrett? Blink twice if you can hear me…
The last bastion of defense standing between the women of this country, by all of our definitions*, and those who would own us for power-hungry, political or religious reasons was the Supreme Court of the United States. We can no longer count on this politicized body to do what is reasonable, much less what is ethically sound. Privacy, bodily autonomy, and personal rights are meaningless tropes now. We need to understand this new reality for what it is: not ours. It is a drama constructed for us by mostly white evangelical boys pretending to be warrior-men for a vengeful old-testament God. But it is not ours.
Perhaps it has never been ours. Perhaps we’ve been fooling ourselves all along — particularly us white women, who imagined a privileged illusion of reality where we had all the power we wanted and none of the power we didn’t want — where we were often complicit by choosing security over justice. We may need to own that in order to set the illusion aflame.
But what now?
We could ask nicely for our reality to be returned to us on the grounds that we’re truly sorry for having disobeyed you, and we promise to do better next time.
We could put on our Notorious RBG t-shirts and pink pussy hats and walk down streets to get 5 minutes of press coverage and the exhilarating rush of the chant.
We could run around screaming at each other to vote, but the same people who own our bodies own our ability to vote. And it’s just not enough anymore.
Or, we can take our own lessons from history. Mario Savio, free speech activist, said in 1964:
There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part. You can’t even passively take part. And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels — upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop! And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.
We cannot get our bodies back in the same reality from which they’ve always owned us. We cannot win a rigged game. We must make the machine stop.
For those of you who feel you can without physical or financial danger: the minute this decision is officially released, stop. Stand up from your desk and walk out. Leave any responsibility that is safe for you to leave and go to the street and just stand there. Stand tall and proud, silent but determined. Stay there as long as you can. Gather together and create a new reality. Make magic.
Force the machine to stop.
*See Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn’s request to “define woman” from SCOTUS nominee Ketanji Brown-Jackson during the future justice’s confirmation hearing.
Works Cited
Laumann, Edward O., Leitch, Sara A., and Linda J. Waite. “Elder Mistreatment in the United States.” J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2009 Oct 5.
Published in final edited form as: J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci. 2008 Jul; 63(4): S248–S254. doi: 10.1093/geronb/63.4.s248
National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV). “National Statistics Domestic Violence Fact Sheet.” https://ncadv.org/STATISTICS
National Organization for Women (NOW). “Violence Against Women in the United States: Statistics.” https://now.org/resource/violence-against-women-in-the-united-states-statistic/
National Sexual Violence Resource Center (NSVRC). “Statistics.” https://www.nsvrc.org/statistics
Savio, Mario. “Bodies Upon the Gears Speech.” FSM Archive. 2 December, 1964.
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). “UNODC report on human trafficking exposes modern form of slavery.” https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/human-trafficking/global-report-on-trafficking-in-persons.html
