Recently, my partner asked me why something was bothering me (well, really he was confused about WHEN something had started bothering me) which ended up causing a great deal of frustration. How could he not understand why I would be bothered? That eventually lead to me wondering how he could be so insensitive, but after seeing my hurt he did come back around to ask his questions differently. What was the seed that planted this disagreement and hurt feelings?

“Witch hair.”

The Witch Hair Story

Saddle in, because this post is going to be long. It’s a topic that I have been sitting on for a while. Mostly because it deserves attention, care, and thoughtful consideration. I was curled up on the couch, petting our youngest dog when I noticed that her single black whisker had regrown. She had lost it a few months ago, and it had not only grown back, but it returned as a rogue, solitary black whisker. I jokingly referred to it as a “witch hair”, a term my mother used when I was a child to reference the random chin hair that plagued the middle-aged woman. I immediately stated how the term was conflicting to me, despite being the one who used it in that instant.

I honestly had no idea he would even question that. I assumed he would wander off and I would go back to my thoughts and that would be the end of it. When he did ask why I was conflicted, face contorted in bewilderment, I found myself, much to my own surprise, mildly perplexed and annoyed.

Isn’t it obvious?

Before I continue, it should be stated that I find no fault in anyone for having ever used the term. To most people, it’s just a silly phrase for something so normal. However, if you peel back the layers, examining it through the lens of history, you might understand the violence of it, and this was at the center of my grievances. Women who no longer suit men in looks and utility are represented as crones and outcasts, manifesting the story of the evil witch with the hairy mole on her face. An angry woman who loathes the youthful and wishes to rob them of their “happily ever after”. The subtextual messaging layered with blatant imagery demonizes older women – and people wonder why women who reach perimenopause no longer have time for your shit…. Yet, to my partner it was a simple representation of the evil witch in the forest, hideous and lurking in the shadows – a Disney witch. The toned down, made for TV, green and cloaked hag that children should fear. A creature of fairytales!

So, here we were. One of us considering another “thinly veiled insult”, so seemingly innocuous that even women use the term, and the other confused with fun images of halloween caricatures.

When Did I Start to Feel This Way?

Truthfully, however, when he asked “when did this start bothering you so much?” I realized that this was the answer I wanted men to understand. The when…I suppose it was always there a bit for me – I was called a feminazi in Middle School for believing I could do anything a boy could do. I grew up in a time when men and boys thought misogynistic jokes about being barefoot in the kitchen were fun to make – or how women are bad drivers, dumb and incapable, and bad at math. We were even still banned from certain career fields in the military when I first joined the Air Force. I always took up the mantel that boys and girls were equal, so my fury was always there. In 2017 when this country elected a man who believed it was a triumph to “grab [women] by the pussy” and enough people did not see that as a crime or even a character flaw, my fury grew deeper.

Now today, a year into this current administration, I can feel the pendulum swinging back, the wrong way. I suppose that was foolish of me to believe we were on a different ride and not one that would ever return to anything pre-1985. The jokes, the razzing, the silly comments no longer feel funny or light. They feel like threats and they carry a weight that feels suffocating and impossible to fight off. They feel real and imminent.

Side tangent: when I was younger, being the girl who challenged the boys and stood up for herself had several different labels, depending on how you presented yourself. I was more feminine (and half German), so I was a feminazi, as opposed to being a lesbian or “butch”. This is a whole different topic on the injustice of what it meant to be a gay kid during the ’90s, one I am not qualified to speak on.

The point I want to bring up, however, isn’t the fact that the messaging was a “strong, powerful” woman who defended the rights of women and girls. There is a toxicity there that I bought into. Yes, it was empowering at times. Admittedly, I sometimes derived enjoyment out of the argument. The question, however, we should be asking is: why were we even asking young girls to have to fight this fight? Why were we telling young girls and women to “be strong”? Wouldn’t cooperation with our male counterparts have been healthier and more productive for everyone? Shouldn’t we have been teaching boys to stop being rude, instead?

And, I understand the urge some people may have to say “stop being so sensitive. It was all in ‘good fun'” – but then, you might not be listening to what I am saying….

This isn’t Just About Women

Let’s rewind for a moment. I don’t want to write a piece that leaves every guy who reads it thinking “here we go again – tell us how it is all our fault”. The truth is, most guys in my orbit are like my partner…good guys, perhaps a bit clueless at times, but genuinely interested in understanding the female plight and making the world a better place for everyone. For me, it was the system that caused problems. The system was, and still is, the machine that churns out the ideologies, the oppression, and much of the hate that exists against groups of people who are not like those in power. Television shows portraying gender and racial biases, companies promoting men to leadership roles without considering women (or sometimes pushing the antagonistic rivalries between women), and organisations and colleges advertising specific careers to women (although, I recently read that more women are enrolled in universities than men, which is a huge win).

It was never specific individuals, but rather systems, that left me unaware of what ADHD looked like in females, making me feel like a constant failure or less intelligent. It was a system that placed a male marine as our class leader at DLI (Defense Language Institute), even though I was the higher ranked student in my cohort. It was a discriminatory system that cost me a job at the vet when I was pregnant and needed the money. It was the same system that has left every female I have ever known vulnerable to sexual attacks at least once in their lifetime, from unwanted groping to rape. It’s also the same system that made it acceptable to ask the woman “what were you wearing when he grabbed you?”

Female bodies are “equal” to men’s in the space of medical science on account of being “complicated”, but then othered and relegated when considered for leadership positions on account of being “emotional”. Meanwhile, little boys are told to take from the world what they want because they deserve it. Not for merit, not because it was earned, but because they are boys who will become men. Imagine, for a moment, what that means. Taking whatever you like from whomever or wherever just because you want it. No need to ask permission. It was never done overtly – the system is far too clever for that. It is insidious, and every one of us becomes a victim to that messaging.

The very epitome of how this shows up in the world is currently leading the United States of America, along with several of his deplorable friends, family, and colleagues, straight into masculine destruction. This example trickles downward in the most profound way, infecting the minds of young men. It is a self-sustaining, continuously evolving, closed system of bigotry and malice.

It is also the very same system that aims to put men in specific buckets (man’s man vs. “cuckold”, effeminate, nerd, etc.), denigrating those they view as “less than”, whilst also fueling racism and environmental destruction. To share some of the messaging from just one day last week, here are some headlines from the “man-o-sphere” and the MAGA-verse:

“women are meant to be f*cked…they can be mothers, whores, or nuns” (Nick Fuentes). Nick Fuentes, a young conservative podcaster, is an example of just how bad the morals of this country have fallen. He has also claimed to love Hitler and believes women want to be raped.

ICE agents might be stealing from the individuals they are arresting and detaining – be it jewelry, money, phones, or other items, essentially looting people who are already powerless, poor, and different.

The Trump administration has rolled back regulations in abattoirs in order to process more pork and poultry, making it more unsafe for humans and animals (meaning, greater risk of disease for the animals you eat). This also neglects the emotional toll to the humans who work in these conditions or the animal welfare who are living entire lives of suffering.

The Trump administration has approved the use of Cyclobutrifluram (a PFAS) and Glyphosate-based Roundup (a potentially cancer-causing chemical) pesticides on our food – products that had been previously banned

The Trump administration also rescinded our 2009 endangerment findings because they don’t think climate change is real.

So many of the themes driving this hyper masculine ideology of the current administration deals with production. If you aren’t the person taking and using the goods and services, then you are meant to produce them. Produce sex, babies, food, oil, etc. There is such a deep imbalance of power and resource sharing in our country, currently. Some of us may have been able to insulate ourselves from the worst of it, but that won’t be true forever. The environment, wildlife, production animals and disenfranchised groups of people will likely face further abuses and anything that was protecting them from potential destruction has been dismantled.

Intersectionality and Feminism

As a woman I do eat and drive a car, taking goods and using services…for a price; therefor I am not, perhaps, the MOST exploited on this list. That burden likely falls to the environment, other-than-human animals (production animals, wildlife, it doesn’t matter), and children – basically, everyone and everything lacking a sense of autonomy in the human spaces¹. The varying struggles between living beings can be argued by extrapolating the concepts of intersectionality as established by the work of Patricia Hill Collins.

Essentially, she says that we are all part of individual matrices, comprised of our race, class, gender, sexuality and the cultures in which we were raised (to name a few), all affecting our personal lived experiences. Just as a gay black man may have different challenges than a gay white man, a poor white man also does not experience the same privilege as that of a wealthy white man. It stands to reason, to me, that we have organized ourselves into “teams” that do not make sense, but I digress. Intersectionality is, to me, what has made it so difficult to parse out why so many individuals have willingly prescribed to and voted for policies and overlords who do not have their best interest in mind. It isn’t just one “kind” of person who are the “red hats” (a.k.a. “Triple Trumpers” or MAGA). In fact, the only thing that truly seems to unite them is their commitment to Donald Trump. A byproduct of this movement, however, is a hatred towards women, LGBTQ+, and people of color, but more alarmingly is the openness with which these feelings are expressed. Out of the darkness, and into the light….

Feminism and the suffragist movement, however, taught me it isn’t about male versus female – as is evident by individuals such as Karoline Leavitt, Kristi Noem, and Pam Bondi, who seem to side with the ideologies of patriarchal bigotry. It is about giving voice and autonomy to those who have been disenfranchised. It was Sarah McLachlan giving us Lilith Fair for women to jam out, welcoming everyone, including the gay, queer, and the different, to be their authentic selves. It was Eunice Kennedy Shriver establishing the Special Olympics to allow individuals with unique needs or conditions to compete in a variety of physical games. It was the countless black women who fought for black and women’s rights like Ida B. Wells who co-founded the NAACP. Women fighting for everyone.

In my own lived experience, society can sometimes feel like a sliding scale of violence and privilege, and being a female in America these days feels like the scale is sliding further away from agency and autonomy for the female person and all of the people feminism tries to protect. My own matrix of intersectionality has changed over time – our financial status has ebbed and flowed, my position at work evolved, but the female part – the most discriminated part – has always remained a constant. How my gender has been viewed and treated has shifted, depending on the environment in which I was immersed or the context of my circumstances, but I am, nevertheless, still female and that awareness never goes away.

I can not speak to the struggles and fears of those who are trans, queer, or basically not cis gendered, just as I can not speak to the struggles of those who are not white. I also can not speak to what it means to be a deer or a fox or a cow exiled to a factory farm, or a tree or a mushroom at the edge of a dying ecosystem, but we co-exist, sympoietically, and that connection is all I need to understand the cruelty of removing their voice and their welfare. Donna Haraway refers to this interbeing as tentacular. Tentacular thinking acknowledges the messy, intertwined nature of everything, yet somehow, as we stand here today, I am sensing a divide between us and them. Everything and everyone versus the wealthy oppressors. We remain intertwined while they have seemingly transcended their own existence with money and power. And yet…there remains in-fighting within our side. A fractured team fighting trolls.

Tentacular Knowledge

The tentacular interbeing is the very essence of feminism to me. The perspective and insight into the messy, intertwined nature, given life and voice. Women have consistently been tasked with jobs of care, nurture, ecological awareness, and all of the tangled bits of life. We are uniquely qualified to guide a path forward, even if it is side by side with men. It isn’t about dominating the airwaves with womanly woes – it is about allowing a diversity of voices to be heard for the benefit of all. Sadly, the stories, the research, and the proposed theories of women tend to get drowned out or categorized, not as ideas in their field, but as “ideas from a woman”, as if to somehow lessen the quality of their research and knowledge.

Feminist epistemology acknowledges those spaces of knowing and understanding as a woman or as another disadvantaged and subordinate group. The embodiment of knowing as women, but, more importantly, our knowing as women within particular societies is important to understand everything we are experiencing today. It can determine how we act, treat ourselves, treat each other, and navigate the world. It explores the myriad ways in which we are kept silent or further disadvantaged. Accounting for intersectionality, we must also acknowledge that no two women or two “subordinates” will hold within them the same experience.

It also helps us all understand that when women and disadvantaged groups are invited to the table, new discoveries and new insights are unearthed. Diversity of knowledge has value beyond measure and feminist epistemology tells us why, how, and what it looks like when we deny these truths and knowledges.

So Where Are We Headed?

None of this is to say that I believe we are lost to some grim reality, but the murmuring in the wind feels suspiciously ominous. The system to which I was referring earlier in this post is not a specific government or a singular ideology, per se. It is more like a collection of things that are necessary to funnel power to those who wish to have it and have the means to acquire it. It looked different from era to era, decade to decade, but one thing has always remained: when a group of people decide to fight for dominion through greed and violence, it is always the same outcome and the same cost. The women, the poor, the different, and the Earth get raped, looted, strangled, and blamed. The ultimate scapegoats for the rich and powerful who are, so often, men.

And they employ the use of hate and division within the tentacular spaces from which they have removed themselves. They create armies from the desperate lives over which they rule. They need not fight us if we fight each other. I am reminded of the poem, First they came.

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me

Martin Niemöller is an imperfect poet, having started out as a Nazi sympathizer, but I think that is exactly the point. We are all imperfect and we are all susceptible to poor belief structures and capable of harm. Which makes it so easy to con entire populations with myths spun by the powerful. Unfortunately, the myth that immigrants are the cause for our crime or that amoral women (or women, in general) are the cause of a crumbling civilization is manufacturing real pain and real fear for many of us.

I love being a woman. There are many things to say about the lives of women that are incredible, compassionate, powerful, and full of value. Not everything about having breasts and a vagina deals with fear and oppression. In fact, although it wasn’t perfect, a great deal of my adult life was witnessing a shift to a state of equality and real progress. Obviously, my stories above suggest we were still far behind where we need to be, but we were always moving forward. We were moving at a pace where I believed our daughters would never need to feel invisible and disrespected just for being female.

I still have hope that our government and our leaders will end this madness. But first they came for the women, then the immigrants, then they came for the trans kids, then the poor. Who will they come for next? Will it be you?

1. Human spaces: I mostly mean the areas we’ve developed or have cordoned off for mining and recreation thereby disturbing nature, but it could be argued that every inch of the planet is now a “human space”, having touched or sullied it in some way with our anthropomorphic behaviours. ↩︎