Putting Our Down Theres Out There
How To Grab Attention in Trump’s America
At the Women’s March in San Francisco, I was prepared to be inspired by the solidarity of women and their allies, by the intersectionality of progressive causes, by the grit and gall of the activists. What I was not prepared for was all the vaginas.
I have lived in San Francisco for 12 years. I have attended Pride, the Dyke March, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence “Hunky Jesus Easter Contest”, even the Exotic Erotic Ball at the Cow Palace (the tickets were free), but I have never seen such wild celebration of the Down There in such a public place. You couldn’t swing a cat without hitting a pussy.
The sheer volume of vaj was staggering: full sized labia costumes, medically accurate renderings of the female reproductive system with ovaries raised in fisticuffs, pink pussy hats sprinkled atop the crowd like candy hearts. Naturally I assumed there would be signs and statements in support of reproductive rights, but this was next level. As the march lurched to a start, the clouds opened up and rain fell in buckets; before long, the Civic Center was flooded with wet pussies.
The most shocking thing about it was that no one seemed shocked in the slightest; not even the rain could dampen the festival atmosphere. I saw a girl merrily use her sign as a makeshift umbrella. It read, “Give a Queef for Debt Relief!” The event was staunchly NSFW, and yet still managed to be a family affair. Pussy paraphernalia was ubiquitous regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, and in the case of a few dogs I spotted, species. Even on the free lovin’ west coast, in America’s own Sodom, this was an exceptional sight.
In this country, the vagina is like the mafia: secretly powerful, operating outside the mainstream, both sensationalized and demonized by the general public; the ones who talk the most about it usually know the least. I started my career in reproductive rights and saw first hand how deeply committed our culture is to pretending that babies come from a cabbage patch. I have seen more simulated blow jobs in standard R rated films than I know what to do with, but the suggestion of a man going down on a woman is still considered too hot for American audiences. Women are taught that their bodies are too dirty and complicated to discuss out loud. I was 30 years old before I could buy tampons without blushing, and I was raised by a proud feminist. The sad truth is that most Americans would rather talk about the Ebola virus than the healthy shedding of a uterine wall.
But looking out onto the sea of victorious vulvae, unflinching uteri and flagrant Fallopian tubes, I could feel that something had changed.
Surely the proliferation of medically accurate sex ed has helped demystify the female reproductive system for younger generations, and our culture’s general progressive drift has helped file down our Puritan edges when it comes to the lady business. Chastity belts are now figurative as opposed to literal. But there was something about this election, this inauguration, this president that made the streets run pink this weekend. And here is the truth of it: Our pussies didn’t bring the fight to Donald Trump; Donald Trump brought the fight to our pussies. And that man, who has never apologized for anything in his life, will be sorry that he did.
We already knew that President Trump thinks the most basic functions of the female body are disgusting. But when women all over the world heard him brag about how his celebrity superseded consent, how his privilege granted him the right to commit sexual assault, it broke something in us. It was alarming. It was an alarm. This man sees the world as buffet of delights laid out for his pleasure; in his eyes, women are reduced to disembodied parts behind a sneeze guard. The canines at the Westminster Dog Show are treated with more respect than the women at his beauty pageants. It’s a nightmare that every woman has had — that no matter her accomplishments, behind closed doors, men are holding her up to the light for comparison, judgement, scorn. And here was this powerful man doing just that. And here was the awful bet he made against our people. That this country wouldn’t care. That our commitment to progress was superficial, and at the end of the day, the degradation of half the population wasn’t a deal breaker. That anything is better than a bitch for president.
The night of November 8th, I tossed and turned, sick with the feeling that maybe he was right. Maybe this country doesn’t love me the way I love it. Maybe we haven’t come as far as I’d thought. Maybe all of the heartache and suffering and toil endured by American women throughout history would never be enough, because at the end of the day, we still picked this monster, this unapologetic hater of women as the face we present to the world. Maybe the enemies of the future are stronger than its defenders. Maybe.
But what I saw on Saturday was a resounding rebuke to that fear. Joyful, giggling grandmas, mothers, daughters, sons, husbands in pink pussy hats packed the streets and squares of London, DC, LA, Cincinnati, St. Louis, New Orleans, Denver, and no one was ashamed. No one was afraid. The world took to the streets to glorify women’s bodies, their sovereignty, their sanctity. They celebrated the ways this sanctity intersects with the sanctity of the environment, civil liberties, health care, LGBTQ rights, and immigrant rights. Maybe it took a villain as foul as Donald Trump to inspire such unified opposition. When he came for the vagina, the vagina and all its friends (i.e. everyone) decided to make him an offer he can’t refuse.
To those that didn’t march, that think all of this looks absurd: It IS absurd. The fact that we have to do this in 2017 is so absurd, it threatens to tear the very fabric of reality. To those who think, as Kellyanne Conway told CNN, that the marchers were being “lewd”: HAVE YOU MET OUR PRESIDENT? Between vaginas and fascism, I know who I’d rather normalize. My vagina has never suggested a Muslim registry or stealing foreign oil or building a wall against our neighbors; it also believes in climate change, even though it makes its own weather.
Donald Trump thinks women are disgusting. Women and their allies marched all over the globe in response — NO, Donald, YOU are disgusting. We will not be shamed. We will not driven underground again, to back alleys and second class citizenship. We hold up half the sky, though let’s be real — it’s probably more than half since we usually carry more than our share and also kick ass at multi-tasking. And if we have to parade down the street on a giant labia float, throwing birth control pills like Mardi Gras beads, screaming the word PUSSY! into the heavens until the sky cracks open and rains down freedom and dignity for everyone, then FINE. SO BE IT.
Our bodies are magic. Our bodies are strong. Our hearts are unconquerable, and we are not going backwards. The cat’s out of the bag.
