I Am No Man.

“Hinder me? Thou fool. No living man may hinder me!”

“But no living man am I! You are looking upon a woman.”

(J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King)

This scene from “The Return of the King” always makes me want to pump my fist in the air and roar. No man, no matter how strong, how quick, how courageous, could kill the Witch King.

He is brought down by a woman.

I’m going to go to a place in my life’s Venn diagram where the geek circle and the politics/feminism circle make a wedge of super nerdiness/badassery. Go there with me, Trekkers, Whovians and Potterheads.

With Hillary Clinton reaching the magic number of delegates to become the presumptive nominee, it seemed like things came into laser focus. Barack Obama and Joe Biden endorsed her, Elizabeth Warren endorsed her, and across the board, the media message was managed and dominated in an epic fashion. I couldn’t get enough of it.

But what made me do the fist-pump-and-roar was this:

I could look at this all day long.

That’s how it’s done, in case you wondered.

Then, Donald Trump, the guy who can’t get one sentence away from telling everyone he’s the least racist person evah before he says something textbook racist, called Senator Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas.” Again.

Elizabeth Warren proceeded to continue dragging Trump, as she has been for a couple of weeks now on Twitter:

A “nasty mouth?” That condescending bullshit makes me as angry as the rest of it, frankly.

Samantha Bee even took aim at the orange imbecile:

Because you know what? He is a serious threat in terms of the presidency, but he is not a serious enough man to be president, and he deserves ridicule. We laugh now, but after we catch our breath and wipe the little tears from our eyes, we organize and phone bank and register voters, and in November, we vote.

Riders of Rohan, saddle up, because Hillz, Liz and Sam have set off and they won’t be waiting for you to catch up.

As much as I love epic stories of good and evil, like the classic Lord of the Rings trilogy, and the Harry Potter series, I don’t believe in monsters, orcs, wraiths or dementors. I don’t believe in calling people who commit even the most atrocious acts “monsters,” because it makes us think that the worst and most terrifying acts of evil come from something other than the darkest side of our humanity.

Epic tales do, though, serve the purpose of being both cautionary and deeply human. They remind us that we can’t predict the dark and dangerous times that always lie somewhere ahead on the path, but that if we draw from our best selves, if we come together, we might come through to the other side.

So often, the heroes are not heroines, though. Eowyn, in the scene at the top of this page, is one. J.K. Rowling, though her central character Harry Potter was male, wrote some outstanding female badasses: Hermione Granger, Luna Lovegood, Ginny Weasley, and Nymphadora Tonks, to name a few.

Usually, in literature and film, we women are the rescued. We might be back-up, but we don’t lead the charge. Strong women often have to emulate, or even masquerade as, men, in order to lead (I’m looking at you, Mulan).

In real life, we have been benched more often than not, or have had our triumphs and invaluable contributions erased or claimed by men.

So there’s something especially gratifying about seeing Donald Trump, the product of a GOP machine that has driven fear, exclusion and divisiveness into the heart of their narrative, being faced down by women.

I believe this: it is women who will lead the revolution.

It is women who will say, finally, No. We’re not going to continue to participate in a political system that demonizes and distrusts us, that shrugs as our children are gunned down in schools and night clubs (we’re coming for you next, NRA), that seriously ponders whether our trans kids can use the bathroom because somehow they might be scary to the homophobic football player who has a hundred pounds and several large friends on them.

Fuck. That. Noise.

We are done.

We are storming the castle of patriarchy and taking back the Iron Throne, dragons at our backs.

Okay, if some guys want to be our ride-or-die homies, that’s cool, too.

We are Imperator Furiosa, heads shaved because who cares that shit gets in the way, and we’ll be kicking ass and taking names. Or not, because WHATEVER YOUR NAME IS JUST MOVE WE’VE GOT SHIT TO DO. A hyper-testosterone patriarchy has had its chance for the last couple of millennia, and they haven’t stopped coming for our children or us, in schools, churches, clinics, or nightclubs so we’ll be taking over now, THANKS.

Yeah, it’s over the top, but you know what else is over the top? The goddamned patriarchy. The system that has held women, people of color, LGBT people, the disabled, the neuro-atypical, basically anyone who isn’t a masculine, hetero-white man, down, for, you know, EVER.

So yeah, I’m going to thrill a lot at the sight of a pant-suited grandmother who stares unblinkingly at that bullying narcissist, Donald Trump, and says, “You don’t scare me.”

Right about now, I think I could walk through fire for this woman.

Knowing the GOP, we might have to do just that, not only between now and November, but in the years that (goddess willing) Hillary is president, and facing the same burn-it-down mentality from the political opposition that has so aged Barack Obama.

It might be more siege than sudden victory, but as women, don’t we know this story? We know about hunkering down, sticking together, getting creative with the stockpiles, and keeping the children safe at all costs.

So no, I don’t believe literally in the epic story of good and evil, but if I did, I might say that Hillary Clinton was made for this battle.

She is no man, and I’m with her.