OPINION: Making Bad History for Women

Women’s History Month, which we’re halfway through, may seem trivial compared with the news from Washington.

The Musk-Trump administration is essentially blessing Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s unwarranted invasion of Ukraine while broadly hinting at Putinesque moves of its own.

Prices remain high, and consumers are being drafted as cannon fodder in a senseless trade war. Elon Musk is gleefully swinging his DO(D)GE chainsaw at Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, not to mention thousands of government workers.

The EPA might as well rename itself the Environmental Destruction Agency. 

Top U.S. health official/anti-vaxxer RFK Jr. seems ambivalent at best about the outbreaks of measles, a disease we thought was eliminated in 2000.  

All this leaves little bandwidth for an increasingly influential group that wants to marginalize more than half of the population.  (Ironically, we wouldn’t be dealing with most if not all of these problems if the strong and competent female candidate rather than the bumbling male criminal was leading our country.)

Rolling back rights

Keyboard warriors have raised snarky questions about why so many boomer women keep fighting for our rights. One reason is that we experienced or were a lot closer to the pre-Women’s Lib era.

Back then, men asked bridegrooms if they’d let their brides keep working.  Women walked a fine line between looking good and being labeled slutty. Abortion was illegal nationwide, but single girls and women were shamed if they got pregnant. Getting divorced was much harder. Assertiveness and almost all good jobs were for men only.

Women today seem more empowered than ever, in politics, business and education. And the radical right, Christian nationalists and misogynistic men are losing their minds.

Rich and powerful people are promoting the idea that oppressing women would improve everyone’s life, as if they don’t know that GOP males control the White House, Congress and the Supreme Court.

Project 2025 lists all sorts of ways to chip away at reproductive rights on a national level. Days after taking office, Trump, who claimed to know nothing about this ultra-right blueprint, pardoned 23 forced birthers convicted of obstructing access to women’s health centers and demanded the dismissal of three pending cases, sending a strong message that this illegal activity is OK.

JD Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson hate no-fault divorce, which makes it easier for women to leave abusive or unhappy marriages. Johnson also voted against a bill that would have codified the right to contraception (and prevented many abortions).

Selling oppression

Catholic nationalist Leonard Leo, a driving force behind the Supreme Court majority that overturned Roe v. Wade, has been recruiting high-profile influencers to do to society what he did to the judicial system. It’s hard to say whether he’ll succeed, but he and his fellow regressives have played long games before.

Some players include “trad wife” stars who extol the joys of devoting themselves to housekeeping, childrearing and, above all, satisfying their husbands.

But this life isn’t like the videos, said A Well-Trained Wife author Tia Levings. During her 13-year marriage to an abusive fanatic, she had nine pregnancies, which resulted in five live births. Four children survived.

Her husband ordered her to call him “my lord,” and he spanked her if she displeased him. If she was unhappy, other women would tell her she should be more submissive.

In an interview with the progressive advocacy group Red Wine & Blue, she called trad wife PR a “soft sell to the cage. … It’s lots easier for everybody if we just gently get there ourselves.”

Patriarchal leaders, she noted, are good at offering solutions to problems they’ve caused. “While we are in this chaotic world of their making and we’re breaking because of what they’re doing, they’re going to offer us this gentle way to come in where it’s more simple.”

Well, it probably is simpler to have no choices.

Male or female, patriarchal cultists believe they’re following God’s will in trying to force their backward rules on everyone else. That they’ll succeed seems unthinkable, but so did many things that are happening right now.

Women’s History Month has been about celebrating our accomplishments, but will we even have a place in the history our country’s making now? 

Lisa Von Ahn is an experienced columnist previously published in the Pottsville Republican Herald newspaper.

Canary note: Opinions expressed in any Op-Ed column appearing on this site are the views of the writer and are not necessarily the opinions of Coal Region Canary.

Want to be a columnist with Coal Region Canary? Contact us at newscanary@gmail.com.

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