No Time for Revelry

In the week leading up to this year’s Fourth of July observance, we were reminded why the American patriarchy must come to an end. We were shown beyond all doubt that neither of the aged men struggling to reach us across a generational chasm is a viable option to lead this nation (though I would argue that should we be left in November with these garbage choices, there is a clear lesser of two evils).

In addition to the 90 minutes of cold hard proof that the beloved patriarchy has destroyed not one but both of America’s major political parties, we were met this past week with the most damning Supreme Court decision in recent history, one that not only puts the lives of women on the line, but everyone, old white men included. It has signaled the fall of democracy itself. Yet still, the cheers reverberate from those failing to realize that in granting immunity to their guy, any other guy who beats and bullies his way into the highest office (because the patriarchy will never elect a gal) will wield the power of a dictator.

Bringing me to my Independence Day thesis—I am sick to death of rich old white men, their infantile egos, and the patriarchy that protects them. I am sick of them sucking up all of the oxygen in every room they enter. I am sick of them putting their pride and their power above everything else, even when those things are living, breathing, screaming, dying human beings.

I am sick of the systems put in place to prop these men up, to parade them in front of us, to push the applause, cast the votes, and nod the heads up and down. I am sick of my friends and family and neighbors sending their money to keep these tired old men at the top of the dog pile. I am sick of these men pretending that they know or care one single second about what life looks like for the average American, most especially when that American is a woman.

I am sick of the billion-dollar industries that have been built around weaponizing women’s insecurities, turning our minds against our bodies. I am sick of living under the watchful, wounding eye of a man’s gaze. While wrinkled, balding, bloated men are placed atop unreachable pedestals, highly successful, world-changing women are lining overstuffed leather sofas in med spas and plastic surgery centers around the country. I am sick of the men who reinforce the image of a woman caged inside her kitchen, plumped up and pin-tucked, legs in stirrups pushing out another generation of single issue, Father-fearing, straight ticket voters.

I am sick of all men–old, young, wealthy or wanting–saying one single thing, sharing one single thought about a woman’s body, how it looks, where it belongs, how many children it must bear, or what medical decisions are made on its behalf. Until male sterilization and castration are utilized to prevent the ever-growing number of unwanted pregnancies and rape in this country, I have stopped listening. If they are willing to let a pregnant woman die on the table or force a child to deliver her rapist’s baby, it is time for state-mandated snips and slices. No exceptions, right?

I am sick of these men pretending they can hear the female voice from inside their echo chamber. Assembly line staffers play telephone to get the feedback from the suburbs, inner cities, and country churches then into the mouths of these men spewing scripted pleas for America’s support. With each passing of the message, the content gets cloudier. Calls for religious freedom morph into homophobic legislation, book bans, and Ten Commandments in classrooms. A mother’s need for affordable childcare gets twisted up the chain until it is heard as a cry for “traditional gender roles.” Our needs only serve as talking points to keep us tethered to the past.

And I am so very sick of the five men (and one woman) sitting in America’s highest court who have just paved the path for further destruction. As partisan politics and backdoor deals seep into our nation’s highest court, the balance of power has been upended. With the Supreme Court’s decision to grant past and future presidents the power of kings, the explosion of fireworks at this year’s Independence Day celebrations signifies not our beginning, but our end.

It seems our Founding Fathers freed us from the British Empire in order to form our own. How profoundly patriarchal of those old dead white men and the near-dead ones mumbling at us from inside the television, spinning lies and self-aggrandizing nonsense, betting our nation and their withering masculinity on a golf swing. How embarrassing for them, for us. How sad. Neither of them will put themselves aside for the good of the country, convinced they are the only ones that can rescue us. They are not our saviors. They are the stones burying us alive.

So, this Independence Day, I will not be celebrating. I cannot find it in my spirit to rejoice for this nation in its current state of disrepair. I will not stand to honor its leaders or anyone else content to live under these divisive and impotent men. Instead, this Fourth of July, I might just reimagine the patriotic traditions of yesteryear.

In the days of the Revolution, early Americans held mock funerals for King George III as Britain’s rule was waning and this country was rising to its feet. May we find our feet again. May we burn any one man’s flag that waves higher than the stars and stripes. May we pause before pledging our love for a man or a party over our love for one another. May we set ablaze the effigies of any men who seek to return us to a voiceless people. May we bury them and their rhetoric deep within the darkness of this American soil, soil upon which people from all stretches of this Earth have fought and died for the freedoms these men continue to steal away. This Fourth of July, may we not be distracted by the pomp and pageantry of a hot summer day because a revolution is no time for revelry.

Ashley, Woman of a Certain Rage