We're not going away

International Women’s Day first emerged during the height of the pre-World War I women suffrage movement. It was quite the radical proposition, that women should have rights, and that people (albeit mostly women) should talk about them. Publicly.

And 110 years on, it’s kind of surprising how many people still think this is genie can be jammed back into the bottle.

At the women’s marches held around the globe since the Kleptocrat was inaugurated, we shouted in our millions, “Women’s rights are human rights.” And that appears to have scared the bejesus out of those who believe it’s their God-given destiny to rule everything and everyone—from computer code to natural resources, to religion, to women and children and everyone not white. The backlash from that crowd has been as virulent as it is ugly.

In the past year we’ve seen the veneer covering those who consider themselves masters of the universe by virtue of an XY chromosome configuration start to peel. The first crack was probably the blog post by Susan Fowler, the Uber engineer who recounted the miserable year she spent there dodging sexual demands from her manager and documenting the company’s efforts to put her in the wrong for wanting to do her job without having to fend off advances or take on lesser professional challenges because her manager’s sensibilities might be affronted. Because: high performer.

(I’m only going back a year, but Fowler’s exposé was built on the background of the seriously vile turmoil of Gamergate a few years ago. Those opposed to women in tech, women having opinions, women expressing opinions and any combination of the above deployed classic shut-down techniques, including rape threats, death threats and doxing to get the women to shut up.

(Another pre-Fowler case was the suit filed by Ellen Pao against VC firm Kleiner Perkins for discrimination—being passed over for promotion, being excluded from the bro-events, being told she was less-than. Throughout the trial, she was subjected to disgusting vituperation on every social media platform out there—she was a slut, she was incompetent, she didn’t have the stones to be a VC (irony not being fully understood in these circles). Pao’s suit was unsuccessful, and that may have been taken by other VCs as license to continue business as usual; in the past year many of them have been exposed as sexual predators holding out the possibility of investments in exchange for “dates” from female founders. If you’re an Asian female founder, you’re in even greater danger of being groped in a Sand Hill Road or SoMa restaurant.)

The Uber case was interesting, because its bro-culture was/is pervasive and a subset of its overall cowboy/anything goes/win at all costs mindset fostered from the top by its co-founder and now ex-CEO Travis Kalanick. But it went all the way up to the board, where at a public meeting following the exposure of this rotten core, board member David Bonderman told board member Arianna Huffington that women talk too much. Bonderman resigned, as did Kalanick (eventually; he still holds something like 29% of the stock), but there are plenty more under the rock from which those two slithered.

And then we had Harvey Weinstein. And Louis C.K. And Mario Batali. And James Franco. And Dustin Hoffman. And Matt Lauer. And Charlie Rose. And… Women you’d think must be sitting in the catbird seat—some even with their names above the titles—subjected to blatant or subtle quid pro quo demands for sex in exchange for not having their careers ruined. Some of them did lose work; all felt slimed and degraded. And on SoMe the women who came forward were vilified as being no better than they should be—because if they’d been virtuous, or talented, or some other thing, they’d have waved off the lechers (who, after all, are just doing what guys do) and continued on their merry way.

I won’t go into what women in the military or first responder services go through, other than to mention that barely two years ago a female firefighter with Fairfax County (right here in the DC suburbs) hanged herself after a campaign of lewd and harassing comments on a social media site. Do I need to specify that the comments were from her (male) comrades? They were.

What we’ve seen in the wake of all these revelations is the backlash from (mostly white) men: oh, gee—you chicks can’t take a joke! Such snowflakes! This is proof you don’t belong out in the big, bad business world. Women are biologically unsuited for [writing code, running a business, holding office, making films, having opinions] anything, basically, that doesn’t involve bearing children and making sandwiches.

To a certain extent, many of this ilk are taking their cue from the orange slimeball whose fat arse fidgets in the Oval Office whenever he’s required to pay attention to anything not focused on his own pathetic and inadequate self for longer than 23 seconds. They see him bragging about his ability to grab pussy whenever he wants, they metaphorically high five each other and they are outraged that they—or any of their ilk—should be thwarted in their God-given right to fuck anything they fancy whenever they fancy. And then get sandwiches.

(Affair with a porn star? Overlapping with another affair with a Playboy Playmate? While your third trophy wife is recovering from giving birth to your fifth kid? Dear sweet baby Jesus, yes—gimme some of that!)

It’s my belief that the #metoo, #timesup and other public movements calling attention to the fact that women are basically mad as hell, and we’re not going to take it any more, have stirred up the hornets’ nests of punctured (largely white) male privilege. They feel like the world was ordained as theirs by God, and they are utterly outraged that we’re claiming part of it. So all the pushback is their version of an extended Kleptocratic tweetstorm: vicious, violent flailing about and screaming that IT'S NOT FAIIIIIIRRRRRRR!!!

I also believe that it’s likely to get worse before it gets better. What we saw with Gamergate; with Pao v Kleiner Perkins; with Ashley Judd, Annabella Sciorra and Salma Hayak exposing Weinstein; with Susan Fowler and Uber—those were the opening salvos. We’re working on Women’s Rights 3.0 (1.0 being the initial suffrage movement, and 2.0 being the Women’s Lib of the 60s and 70s), and there are more releases in this roadmap.

On International Women’s Day 2018, we need to celebrate how far we’ve come, but remember that progress is not linear. We go two steps forward, one to the side, one backward and one forward, like a dance. It's going to be a long, long dance.

And that genie? It’s never going back in the bottle.