I’m not sure I understand how a march where any woman with the ability (physically and financially) to get to one of the cities where a Women’s March was happening could exclude anyone from participating and being seen as well as heard. Basically, the only women that are really ipso facto excluded are poor marginalized women: the women who don’t matter. Women whose voices never get elevated and heard. Women whose unmet needs and disregarded human rights only matter to upper-middle class feminists in the abstract, but not in praxis.
I am not talking only about women who can’t afford to get to one of the places where one of these marches was held, women who can’t afford to take off from work or pay for childcare to go participate. I am talking about poor women who are human trafficking survivors who find the pro-prostitution position of middle/upper-middle class feminists (including non-white women in that social class) that dominates mainstream feminism and mainstream feminist events/activities to be extremely problematic and oppressive.
If it’s unacceptable for upper-middle class feminists to have a “pussy grabber in chief” sitting in the White House, what makes you think it’s OK to set aside an entire class of poor women whose pussies may be grabbed (and penetrated) with impunity by men who use their money and male privilege to buy rape tickets, and call that a “job option” or a “poverty solution” for poor women who are the most severely impacted by systemic economic/social/political discrimination?
I know that many poor marginalized women across the entire racial spectrum who are human trafficking survivors felt very much put off by the march organizers’ officially adopting the pro-prostitution lobby’s position (which is really the pro-pimp/pro-rapist/pro-john position since even pimps and brothel owners also call themselves “sex workers”).
It was this pro-prostitution political position — i.e. pro-exploitation and abuse position — being promoted or embraced by upper-middle class march organizers to the total exclusion of the voices, position and reality of poor marginalized human trafficking victims/survivors that is totally unacceptable to many of the women you claim to march for and speak for.
Ne’cole Moore, a trafficking survivor-leader who is also a Black woman and a feminist, made that point perfectly clear in a letter to march organizers that was signed by many members and fellow survivor-leaders in the trafficking survivor community — myself included.
If you can’t/won’t hold your own side accountable, you have no business pointing fingers at the Pussy-Grabber-In-Chief and the rest of the people on “the other side.”
Corporate feminists across racial lines are not victims; they are perpetrators.
The organizers of the Women’s March and the women who got to speak on stage are all women who benefit from the class oppression of poor women. And many actively and deliberately oppress poor women themselves while claiming to “speak for” poor women who really do suffer the worst because of systemic discrimination. Poor trafficked women, poor disabled women, poor jobless/unemployable women at the bottom of the socio-economic pile with no incomes and no access to ANY medical care, not just abortion and birth control.
Women whom upper-middle class gatekeepers deny jobs with dignity to because “not a good culture fit” in our classist, ableist, ageist society. Women whose medical Gofundmes get attacked and shut down by middle/upper-class women who claim that chronically poor women are either “too irresponsible to be trusted with any money”, or claim are “frauds” and “con artists” for having to beg because of having no other way of getting any money to be able to survive. Poor women — the women who don’t count.
Women’s March? More like Rich Women’s Only March.
Why didn’t these same economically privileged women protest and organize mass marches against Welfare Reform? Where were you when this country’s poorest, most vulnerable and least-able bodied women and kids were trafficked or otherwise forced into prostitution due to life-threatening poverty after this society ripped away the only miserly, inadequate, paternalistic and punitive social safety net from poor women and collapsed the floor from underneath them “just for the principle of it?”
Where were they when Hillary Clinton facilitated the arming of Boko Haram, which is kidnapping and trafficking women as sex/reproductive slaves, by destabilizing Libya and Syria?
Just two weeks ago, 13 Senate Democrats joined the GOP majority in voting down an amendment proposed by Bernie Sanders and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn) that would have helped poor women tremendously — an amendment proposing to lower the cost of prescription drugs and allow us to import cheaper drugs from Canada. Ironically, this amendment to lower the cost of pharmaceuticals and allow for the importing of cheaper medicines from other countries had the support of 12 Republicans — including Ted Cruz, Paul Rand, and John McCain.
But this measure — which would have saved poor American women’s lives by reducing the cost of pharmaceuticals, including the $600 epi pen, by up to 90% — FAILED because of the 13 Democrats who voted against it, including Cory Booker who very publicly sported a Planned Parenthood scarf at the Women’s March.
Why didn’t they protest when Democrats killed a plan that would have saved the lives of poor disabled women, poor chronically ill women, and poor women who are senior citizens who can’t afford their medicines?
Once again, the message was sent by women from the controller class (the professional upper-middle class) that poor women’s lives don’t matter — poor women are an acceptable sacrifice for affluent neoliberal feminists.
If ALL women don’t deserve a livable income (whether they are fortunate to have any job or not), food, decent housing, clothing, access to medical and dental care, and the right to say “NO” to having their pussies grabbed/exposed/penetrated, then the Women’s March is nothing but social class privilege on parade.
What has the Women’s March accomplished?
Is it restoring our eliminated safety net for poor jobless “hard-to-employ” women who are unable to economically provide for themselves — women who’ve been permanently pushed out of the job market due to major health crises and/or age discrimination, women who have learning disabilities or intellectual disabilities whom no one will hire for anything and accommodate on the job, women who are battling chronic illnesses?
Is it facilitating the re-housing of poor homeless women with no incomes who’ve lost everything in the 2008 economic collapse, women who remain jobless and poor due to age discrimination because they’re now in their 50’s and struggling for their lives in “tent cities?”
Is it changing ANY laws and public policies that truly benefit ALL women?
Or is it merely feel-good boutique activism that solves exactly ZERO problems for women — least of all poor women who suffer the most?
The Women’s March seems to be nothing more than Soros-funded controlled opposition to an oppressive socio-economic and political status quo — if you can call prancing around in “pussy hats” a genuine display of any kind of “opposition.”
