{"id":40212,"date":"2017-02-08T05:30:11","date_gmt":"2017-02-08T09:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/nolongerquivering\/?p=40212"},"modified":"2017-02-07T16:28:44","modified_gmt":"2017-02-07T20:28:44","slug":"womens-march-cultural-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/nolongerquivering\/2017\/02\/womens-march-cultural-war\/","title":{"rendered":"The Women’s March is a Culture War"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"Samanthafield\"<\/a>by Samantha Field cross posted from her blog Samantha P Field.com<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I was raised to be a culture warrior.<\/p>\n

As a member of Generation Joshua (the first generation of homeschoolers), I was supposed to be a well-trained advocate for the theocratic Christian fundamentalist cause, through any means I had access to. In college I picketed reproductive health clinics, I protested, I went door-to-door getting signatures for ballot measures, I went to political rallies. I spent the bulk of my life trying to convert people to Christianity, or persuading more moderate Christians to join my causes\u2013 young earth creationism, King James Bible Only-ism, complementarianism, the stay-at-home-daughter movement \u2026 One of the issues I cared about the most was abortion, which I saw as murder and wanted to restrict through any means necessary. If that meant forcing those murderous clinics out of business, or making it too difficult for women to get an abortion, so be it.<\/p>\n

I saw it as my Christian obligation to convince as many people as I could that women are supposed to submit to their husbands, and that feminism is a lie from Satan meant to pull women onto the path of destruction. I believed that being my version of a godly woman would shine like a beacon into the world and demonstrate the truthfulness of Christianity. To me\u2013 to most of us, I think, the Culture Wars were never just about changing the laws: it was about changing the culture around us. Taking back my country for Christ couldn\u2019t possibly be accomplished unless most of us were fundamentalist Christians, and that meant we needed more than just mere conversion. I wanted to radically and fundamentally alter the way my culture saw social, historical, political, and religious issues.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s perhaps ironic that none of that has actually changed. Oh, it\u2019s changed in substance<\/em>, but not in form.<\/em><\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

I went to the Women\u2019s March on Saturday, in DC. I marched with a group of straight, bi, lesbian and trans women, non-binary people, Jewish women, a Latina woman, and one straight cisgender white male ally. Most of us had gotten together for a sign-making party the weekend before, and chose a variety of phrases for our signs. Nolite te bastardes carborundorum, <\/em>a quote from The Handmaid\u2019s Tale<\/a><\/em>, was a favorite. I\u2019d been torn between a few ideas for my own sign in the weeks before. \u201cFear is the Mind Killer\u201d from Dune<\/em><\/a>, or \u201cI will be Non-Compliant,\u201d a reference to Bitch Planet<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>topped my list of possibilities a while. I was trying to figure out what I wanted the Women\u2019s March to mean to me, what I wanted to remember about it and why I\u2019d gone.<\/p>\n

Eventually I settled on a quote from Susan B. Anthony<\/a>: \u201cOrganize, Agitate, Educate must be our war cry.\u201d<\/p>\n

I chose it for a variety of reasons\u2013 I\u2019m a huge nerd being one of them\u2013 but mainly I chose it because it\u2019s what I wanted the March to do<\/em>. I want every person who marched to become a part of the resistance against hatred, bigotry, and totalitarianism; I want us all to agitate to make our voices heard and make our message clear; I want those of us who can to educate the people who don\u2019t know what\u2019s at risk and what they can do to stop it\u2013 or change it.<\/p>\n

So I imagine you\u2019ll understand that I find some of the reactions to the March \u2026 disheartening. Over the past few days I\u2019ve seen a slew of facebook posts and articles going through my newsfeed, most accompanied with something like \u201cTHIS.\u201d There\u2019s one about how men not being patriarchal enough<\/a> is why we marched. Or another condescendingly and patronizingly \u201capologizing\u201d<\/a> to women who have it so much worse than these ridiculous American women who just don\u2019t know how good they have it and how selfish they are (to address the claim that American women have it so good<\/em>, please read this<\/a>, this<\/a>, and this<\/a>). It\u2019s been frustrating, to say the least, because my vision for Marching was so clear, but I didn\u2019t know how to explain to my friends how we\u2019re seeing that protest in fundamentally different ways. There\u2019s a lot of language being bandied about how vulgar it was, how demeaning, how disrespectful, how pointless<\/em> and all I could articulate to myself was arrrrrgh!<\/em><\/p>\n

Finally, one friend asked \u201cWhich rights don\u2019t I have that I\u2019m supposed to be marching for?\u201d and that\u2019s when it finally crystallized for me what the people I know aren\u2019t understanding about the Women\u2019s March. It\u2019s not about formal, legal, written-on-paper, law-of-the-land capital-R Rights. Technically, in America, women have \u201cRights.\u201d We can vote, we can own property, we can serve on juries, we can be autonomous legal agents, we can inherit, etc. Coverture <\/a>is gone and suffrage is here. In the words of Ainsley Hayes<\/a>, \u201cThe same Article 14 that protects you, protects me, and I went to law school just to make sure.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Women\u2019s March is many of the women of this country declaring a culture war<\/em><\/strong> on misogyny, hatred, bigotry, racism, ableism, transphobia, homophobia, femmephobia, and one Party\u2019s intent to destroy not women\u2019s \u201cRights,\u201d but all of our freedoms: The freedom of the press<\/a>, the freedom of speech<\/a>, the freedom <\/a>to peaceably assemble<\/a>. It\u2019s not just our Bill of Rights that are under a war of attrition, either. Women marched this past Saturday because our realities are not all the same, and we have to protect each other. Some women are complaining<\/a> that they feel \u201cdemeaned\u201d by the March because they don\u2019t personally feel that they needed it. Like Ainsley Hayes, they feel \u201chumiliated\u201d by the very notion that some women don\u2019t think we\u2019re equal (which, hate to break it to you ladies, we\u2019re not<\/a>).<\/p>\n