Why I Marched in a No Kings Protest - Our Girls Deserve To Live Their Dreams
Donald Trump is trying to snatch away our democracy. But he and his billionaire backers have already ripped away reproductive rights from half the country and he won't stop. It's time to stop him!
Hi readers. I so appreciate that you are reading my posts and many of you have subscribed. It’s inspiring that you too care about preserving the all important right to bodily autonomy for over half of the people who live in this country. Please read on for why I felt that we all had a unique opportunity to tell Donald Trump, his biggest financial backer - still, Elon Musk - and all his Republican enablers and his billionaire oligarch backers - to take their tyrannical plans and shove them.
We will NOT give up our democracy and the democratic rights that our forbears fought for against a dictatorial king over 250 years ago. An estimated 5 - 12 million Americans all across the country took that chance Saturday June 14th, “Flag Day” at a #NOKINGS protest.
While dictator wannabee Donald Trump abused the supposed -to- be non -partisan military by forcing them to ‘honor HIS birthday’ with a first ever Kim Jong Un - style military parade in Washington D.C. , millions of us chose to join one of the almost 2000 #NOKINGS protests in every part of the country. It was a day of protest in support of democracy. Here’s why I marched!
WHY I MARCHED AND I HOPE YOU WILL TOO
I marched for my own three daughters, for the grand daughters that I hope to have one day and for every little girl in this country.
Every time I look into the sweet innocent face of a little girl or a baby girl, I can’t stop thinking about how precious they are and how they deserve every opportunity to fulfill the dreams that they will soon have.
Dreams of being doctors or scientists or teachers or police officers or video game designers. Whatever inspires their imaginations. They will dream about growing up and being someone they admire.
These sweet little girls will also dream about finding their soul mates and many will hope to become mothers and raise a family that they love.
They are hopeful.
They have no idea that because they were born with female ‘parts’ that there is a powerful man who was elected to lead their country and he is backed by an entire political party with Christian Nationalist billionaire donors who have invested fortunes, intent on taking away critical rights that their own mothers had.
They don’t understand this of course but they will when they get older and they will wonder when they look at their bodies - why do politicians get to have control over whether and when they have a baby? Why can’t they be the ones making that all important decision?
No politician is telling guys that have to have a baby if they accidentally get pregnant or if that baby will threaten their health.
These little girls will realize that they don’t have equal rights in America and they will wonder why their parents and other adults allowed that to happen. Are they as girls, not as good as their brothers or the boys in their classes? Are they inherently not as important or worthy as the boys?
And you know what, they will be right. There is a large, very well - funded anti abortion movement that is committed to the idea that little girls aren’t as good as little boys. That they aren’t worthy of their dreams of being airplane pilots, lawyers, CEOs of big companies, military commanders and yes, even the president of the United States. That those are silly pipe dreams that little girls shouldn’t have.
No, little girls shouldn’t be dreaming ‘big’ and besides which, none of those roles would make them happy anyway.
THEY WANT TO SQUASH THEIR DREAMS
There are hundreds if not thousands of evangelical and Christian nationalist religious leaders that will preach to them about their supposedly ‘God given’ roles as wives, house keepers and mothers. Fulfilling those roles is what will really make them happy. And those little girls may have parents that will echo those words at home.
This well- funded Christian Nationalist movement has its own big dreams and its very biggest dream - which right now, it is being wildly successful in fulfilling - is to take America back to a fairy tale 1950s - when the country was still a white patriarchy. And women were under the control of first, their fathers and then, their husbands.
A patriarchy where white men - only - have access to top jobs and hefty enough salaries to ensure that their ‘little ladies’ can stay home and prepare meals for their husbands, iron their shirts and have a martini waiting for hubby when he walks in the door after his long, hard day at work.
But that’s not the only group of uber wealthy men that wants to control the future of every little girl in America. And they are also funding Donald Trump, so he will turn their patriarchal vision into reality.
Deep pocketed tech bro billionaires, also want a one -man dictatorship and billionaire ruling class and they are financing a far less visible way of dead ending the big dreams and reproductive freedom of America’s little girls and young women.
RIGHT WING BILLIONAIRES WANT WOMEN IN TRADITIONAL ROLES
Their method is deceptively clever. You have to hand it to them to figuring it out and then funding it.
These bros are providing financial backing to appealing young “trad wife” influencers, who spout the joys of giving up careers so they can stay home in sexy ‘raw’ milkmaid dresses and give birth to a whole passel of adorable babies while making it all look so easy and romantic.
Yup, they have the same goals of controlling women, but they put a ‘sexy’ cool spin on it. Instead of supporting the zealous groups that gather outside of abortion clinics, screaming at anyone who enters, or convincing lawmakers to pass extreme abortion bans, these tech billionaires seduce young women into believing that birth control is toxic and that abortion is “forced”.
Their paid influencers are very ‘Make America Healthy (MAHA) in their approach as they cheerily share that they have given up hormonal birth control methods, which they claim without evidence, are ‘toxic’ and instead are using ‘natural’ family planning methods.
‘Natural’ family planning just is a new name for the old fashioned ‘rhythm’ method in which you track your menstrual cycle using the calendar to avoid having sex on ‘fertile’ days.
The only problem, of course, is that almost one in four women will get pregnant every year using rhythm or '‘natural’ family planning. But that’s the point, after all. These ‘trad wife’ sirens want young women to get pregnant.
Let me link you to a profile a leading “trad wife” tech - bro funded patriarchy - promoting influencers. Her name is Brittany Hugoboom. She’s a gorgeous 33 year-old model with two children, a handsome husband and a stunning spacious modernist NYC apartment.
Hugoboom has a website and magazine called Evie ( a play on the original, ‘Eve’) which is a deceptively pretty, ‘normal’ young woman’s website with cover lines like “Stars, Stripes and Gingham” and “Underrated Fashion Brands Without the Five Figure Price Tags’.
Brittany and Evie are packaging ‘femininity’ instead of ‘girl boss feminism’ in a very non threatening way that promises “a soft life, a beautiful life” instead of “exhausting” careers.
When I look at little girls with their thirst for adventure and learning, I - and I bet you - want them to have big dreams that one day they will be able to grow up and obtain.
However, anti abortionists and their Christian Nationalist backers see birds whose wings they can’t wait to clip. They have already banned abortions in twenty states and installed a president and Health and Human Services Secretary who may soon outlaw abortion pills and who is also rumbling that hormonal birth control methods may not be safe to remain on the market.
For this clan and the likes of JD Vance, motherhood is what will make our daughters and granddaughters most happy. God forbid if they decide to be “childless” and instead confer their love on cats. And an even bigger God forbid if they are allowed to end a pregnancy that they are not ready for mentally or financially.
Even if they are raped and just 10 years old.
Those sweet little things should have to give birth to their rapists’ babies because an embryo has as many rights as they do.
Then there are tech broligarchs financing the ‘relatable’ and model - gorgeous anti feminist trad wife influencers who want to trap those little birds in a gilded cage where their original dreams are drowned in visions of a “soft life’, perfect babies and a rich husband. As if there are loads of loving rich husbands to go around for every American young woman.
All they have to do is give up their own ambitions and bodily autonomy.
GIRLS & WOMEN DON’T DESERVE TO LIVE IN A PATRIARCHY
When I marched it was a way of fighting back against both of these right wing forces that both want to control our daughters. If they can control their bodies and twist their dreams then they are halfway to controlling the entire population.
And there is nothing subtle about the effects of abortion bans which both groups support as part of their playbook of control.
No matter how much anti abortion groups worship embryos and fetuses and blab, blab about protecting helpless unborn babies. And no matter how many cows Brittany Hugoboom milks in her sexy milkmaid dress, while telling women that it’s “Right to be Hesitant about Birth Control’, the result of their messages is deadly.
So I didn’t just march in a “NO Kings protes for little girls, I also marched for Amber Thurman, Candi Miller, Nevaeh Crain, Josseli Barnica and Porsha Ngumezi, who lost their lives soley because of cruel abortion bans.
Not one more big girl should be deprived of her life or fertility because women’s reproductive rights have been attacked in this country. It’s time to tell King Donald, his Christian Nationalist and chauvinist tech broligarch’s to literally get their hands off women’s bodies and to back away from destroying our democracy!
Would love to hear from you about why YOU marched! Please tell me in the comments below.
Proud of you and all the marchers. Stay strong, stay together!
Thank you for this essay and shining a light on the trad wife subculture, which I was unaware of. When I read this I thought of my sister and grandfather. My younger sister wanted to attend law school, and askedy grandfather, an accomplished NYC trial lawyer, for help, and he responded "women shouldn't be lawyers, they don't belong in a courthouse". Astonishing, but true. In spite of him, she attended, graduated and became an accomplished family lawyer in the bay area. We need to protect our moms, sisters, wives and daughters rights.