It’s only been 100 days. WAKE UP AND FIGHT, because it’s just getting started.
As women, we have faced many adversaries; we evaluate, we learn, and we regroup. The last time women in the USA regrouped was in the 1970’s and we are overdue. Wynton Marsalis wrote, ” I have absolutely no idea what my generation did to enrich our democracy. We dropped the ball. We entered a period of complacency and closed our eyes…” The lack of urgency has become the general fabric of our current lives and we are losing rights and protection that many before us fought to obtain in the USA. “The tragedy of life is often not in our failure, but rather in our complacency; not in our doing too much, but rather in our doing too little, ” wrote Benjamin E. Mays.
Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, conducted an experiment focusing on people’s justification for the acts of genocide that they carried out, such as the Nazi killings in World War II. Their defense often was based on obedience to their superiors.
- The agentic state – people allow others to direct their actions and then pass off the responsibility for the consequences to the person giving the orders. In other words, they act as agents for another person’s will.
Milgram suggested that two things must be in place in order for a person to enter the agentic state:
- 1. The person giving the orders is perceived as being qualified to direct other people’s behavior. That is, they are seen as legitimate.
- 2. The person being ordered about is able to believe that the authority will accept responsibility for what happens.
Agentic theory says that people will obey an authority when they believe that the authority will take responsibility for the consequences of their actions. This is supported by some aspects of Milgram’s evidence.
“Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth”, echo the words of John F. Kennedy. Trump has initiated the jailing process and he is executing punishment to women on a global scale.
- The Global Gag Rule. Trump’s reinstatement of theMexico City Policy restricts funding so that it cannot be received by any organization that also provides abortion services.
- Potentially Defunding – The Office of Global Women’s Issue. The proposed federal budget cut would see the The Global Women’s Issues Office defunded and that money instead of going to issues involving national security. Abrupt defunding of girls education initiative, Let Girls Learn.
- Revoking Obama’s Fair Pay Scale And Safe Workplace Order The Obama Order require that Federal contractors have paycheck transparency, for evaluation of pay equality. Also, there was a ban on forced arbitration in the case of sexual harassment or assault.
- Proposing To Defund Anti-Violence Organizations. Budget cuts that Trump is proposing would put a lot of key anti-violence funding in danger — with low-income women and women of color bearing most of the burden. This includes the National Domestic Violence Hotline and other programs funded under the Violence Against Women Act.
- Empowering Misogynists. Emboldening power of other leaders to be misogynists around the country.
- Endangering Title X And The Health Care It Provides To Women Everywhere. Family planning funding for low-income women, including helping fund 4,000 Planned Parenthood clinics. But earlier this month, Trump signed a bill that would allow states to control that funding. This means they could deny funding to abortion providers and prevent them from providing the health care that so many women currently rely on. Dire consequences for women when politicians rely on ideology rather than medical expertise.
- Ending U.S. Funding For The UN’s Population Fund. The Trump administration will withhold $32.5 million in funding that had been earmarked this current fiscal year for the United Nations’ lead agency on family planning and maternal health, known as theUnited Nations Population Fund or UNFPA. The administration says it’s doing so because it has determined that UNFPA helps to support a Chinese government family planning program that forces people to get abortions and sterilizations. The U.N. agency says that is not the case. UNFPA countered that the claim was “erroneous,” asserting that “all of its work promotes the human rights of individuals and couples to make their own decisions, free of coercion or discrimination.”
- Attacking The ACA. “Gender rating” when it comes to premiums. Additionally, discontinuing essential female services like maternity care and mammograms.
- Confirming Neil Gorsuch. Gorsuch‘s record is *VERY* clear: he has opposed the rights of women, #LGBTQ people, immigrants, disabled people, & workers.
- Endangering Victims Of Domestic Abuse Through His Immigration Policy. “It’ll deter people from reporting violence. It’ll deter people from seeking services that can also save their life.” The actions by ICE seem to violate the 2013 reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. When the Act was last renewed, provisions were added that ensured confidentiality and protected victims who were undocumented from being detained or deported when reporting the crime.
May the words of Maya Angelou lead us forward, “A wise woman wishes to be no one’s enemy; a wise woman refuses to be anyone’s victim. ”
WAKE UP AND FIGHT!
