#BeBoldForChange

Today is International Women’s Day, the one day out of the year when the world clears its throat and sends metaphorical flowers to the little ladies in its life.

Then it goes back to condoning sexual assault and harassment, pay inequity, reproductive repression and all the other policies it considers only right and proper, as gleaned by direct communication with whatever godhead shines upon the various localities.

I will confess that a year ago on International Women’s Day, I’d not have imagined how far we could have regressed in a mere 365 days. Boy, was I ever a dope. The Kleptocrat and his Gauleiters have unleashed the forces of hate, fury and terror both here and abroad in a way we’ve not seen for decades. And as they raise high the standard of Them vs. Us, the ultimate Them, for these thugs in silk ties, are women.

You can tick all the approved boxes—white; Christian; Protestant; native-born; Republican, even—but if you’re female you’re still only good for a couple of things, neither of which involves control over your own body, let alone over a legislative one. If you’re non-white, non-Christian, non-Protestant, non-native or—horrors—non-Republican, it’s ever so much worse.

Don’t believe me? I’ll give you a couple of examples.

Last month in Utah, the vice-chairman of the Wasatch County Republican party wrote a letter to two local newspapers to oppose a bill before the state legislature that would address pay inequality. Using your basic “because God said so, that’s why” logic, James Green argued that, since men are “breadwinners”, they naturally deserve to be paid more than women.

(And no, as God is my witness, I am not making this crap up.)

“If businesses are forced to pay women the same as male earnings, that means they will have to reduce the pay for the men they employ, simple economics. If that happens, then men will have an even more difficult time earning enough to support their families, which will mean more Mothers [sic] will be forced to leave the home (where they may prefer to be) to join the workforce to make up the difference.”

Sticking his head that far up his ass was not enough for Green, because he went on further, “And as even more women thus enter the workforce that creates more competition for jobs (even men’s jobs) (emphasis added) and puts further downward pressure on the pay for all jobs…meaning more and more Mothers [sic] will be forced into the workforce. And that is bad for families and thus for all of society.”

Green was evidently surprised at the ridicule and outrage this vignette from 1617 sparked—even in Utah, not known as a bastion of liberalism. (Although the tech industry that’s growing there may have something of a modernizing effect.) He later issued the customary apology that his stating the facts of a God-given case could cause so many misguided persons offence, which then had (and this is the crux of his remorse) negative consequences for his immediate career.

However, something else occurred just this past week, which attacks another of those hard-won human rights. In Texas—which has already rolled back access to reproductive clinics (and unsurprisingly therefore has the highest maternal mortality rate in the developed world)—the Senate has advanced SB 25, which permits physicians to withhold information from pregnant women (in effect, lying to them) about the condition of their fetus. When they give birth to babies with congenital deformities or diseases, the mothers (and even the fathers!) will not be able to sue the doctors for wrongful birth.

Yeah—the Texas lege supersedes the Hippocratic Oath, which starts out, “first, do no harm.” Because: abortion. 

(Given the last round of Nazis’ love of eugenics, I’m wondering how long it’ll take for this crop of them to come up with their own Aktion T4? They're heading there with their lame-ass "replacement" for the ACA, and with one of their leading lackeys, Jason Chaffetz (R, I-guess-I-can-look-my-teenage-daughter-in-the-eye-after-all), advising Americans that we'll just have to make choices, like not "getting that new iPhone that they just love" and taking the money saved to "invest in their own healthcare." And as God is my witness, I am not making that shit up. Why the citizens of Utah do not rise up and physically remove this arrogant, oblivious replicant from office I do not know.)

Well, that’s the state of the country on this International Women’s Day, 2017. We marched in our millions back in January, and it enraged the Kleptocrat and his followers. That was great, but we cannot afford to rest. We are engaged in a war for humankind, and wars are not won by a battle, or even a campaign. They are won over the long haul, by those willing to step up in ever-growing numbers and say, “hell no—we are not going back.”

Because women’s rights are human rights, we must persist.