I have listened to the speeches by Ashley Judd and Madonna a number of times now, and they still continue to shock me. Not because I am offended, rather because I am concerned about the message feminists are now sending to young impressionable girls.
Hands off your vagina? Not a problem.
Twelve years ago, Trump was talking in private to an acquaintance and insinuated in a thoroughly vulgar way that women were nothing more than there for his pleasure. I am happy that women around the world called him out on this, and that he actually apologised for it (which is something of a novelty for Trump). So, when it came time for the million women’s march in Washington DC I was looking forward to women showing Trump that we are more than sexual objects. We are mothers, daughters, nurses, lawyers, pilots, teachers. We are an integral part of society and as such, we need to be respected and treated with the due deference our position in society demands. Instead, what I got was a whole host of barely clad ladies reducing themselves down to nothing more than the female anatomy. In some cases, they even came dressed up as vaginas, or topless with statements scrawled on their bodies. I found it ironic that Trump reduced them down to vaginas in his private statements, and then the feminists happily reduced themselves down to vaginas publicly. It seemed like feminists and Trump had more in common than one might initially think. But the march was not just a parade of immodestly dressed women who were obsessed about female genitalia. It also had speeches!
Madonna’s speech was filled with expletives and contained a veiled threat of violence towards the white house, and I assume the people within the white house. Thankfully she kept her comments about violence to just the threatening level (and I do not think she should be prosecuted), rather than many of the people in her audience, who did commit acts of violence. But I digress. I don’t know exactly what bill or policy Madonna was agitating for or opposing. It just seemed like a tantrum that went nowhere. However, not to be outdone in confusion and erratic yelling, Ashley Judd managed to top Madonna. She talked an awful lot about her periods and finding bloodstains. Again, a very strange area to delve into in such a public forum, especially considering it had no bearing on anything of political substance. Her speech was vulgar and crude. It contained language that most mothers would punish their children for using. But her rant did actually have one minor point. She was annoyed that tampons have a tax on them, like every other product out there. And so, I watched Ashley Judd rant and rave, waiting for her to get off the stage so someone of substance could get up there. I so much wanted to hear a woman state loud and clear that we have vital roles in society, and the most fundamental of those roles is to raise contributing members of society. And how can we do that if we are not respected and valued? How can we do that if we don’t have policies that assist balancing motherhood with a career? But that speech never came. Instead I got a mouthful about pussies and periods. It was so vile that certain speeches were cut short due to profanity usage. For a moment there I thought they had found another tape of Trump’s from twelve years ago.
It is strange that this is the image feminism is desperate to create for itself. For it was not always like this. The late 1800s/early 1900s saw the first wave of feminists appear in the modern era of the West. They were aptly called the suffragettes, as they did not even have suffrage (the right to vote). There were many other rights they did not enjoy, but the right to vote was the greatest, and the main reason for their existence. I studied these women as part of my degree and enjoyed it greatly. They dressed modestly, behaved in a dignified manner, expressed themselves clearly, and abhorred profanity. They sought to change the treatment of women by gaining rights that women were not afforded and by imploring men to behave per the standards that was culturally demanded of themselves. To illustrate my point, at women’s rights marches, the suffragettes had signs that read “The right to vote for women and chastity for men” and “If prostitutes cannot vote, that neither should their clients!”. Suffragettes believed that their behaviour was better than men, and instead of stooping to the level of men, they agitated for men to raise themselves to the level of women and be judged in the same manner they were. And the level of behaviour of women at that time was impressive. For instance, The Women’s Social and Political Union, which was the largest women’s rights organisation in England at the time (and eventually came to Australia), adopted as their main virtues and standard of behaviour; purity, dignity and hope. Over in America, women like Susan B. Anthony started temperance organisations, which implored men to reject alcohol use. Suffragettes were keenly aware about the suffering wives endured when married to alcoholic husbands. Sobriety to suffragettes was a virtue and a desirable state of mind. But to be sober, chaste, dignified, hopeful and pure requires enormous self-control. It is naturally far better if we are, but it is also naturally far easier to be drunk, loose, uncouth, cynical and sluttish.
Now, let’s fast forward 100 years, and ask ourselves, how would the suffragettes have felt about the behaviour of the women during the million women march in Washington DC this week?
I’ll leave you to answer that one.