Tag: Ashley

As I sit down to write this November column, it is 24 hours until election day. Last month, I spent my time crafting an article that the Tribune refused to publish as it related “too directly to national politics,” a crime I have most certainly committed time and again over these past five years as a columnist for this newspaper. And while I understand why the Tribune might enforce such a policy to help limit contention, I object to any form of censorship whether it pertains to my words or anyone else’s. Given the crossroads we are facing in this moment and all that we stand to lose, I think one of the most notable losses we could suffer is the extermination of our freedom to disagree. I ask the Tribune to reconsider their decision on my October column and any other pieces by columnists who ventured into this forbidden territory, as national politics is sewn directly into our everyday lives. There is no escaping it. My previously unpublished column centered on how sexism continues to impact women in our homes, our workplaces, and on the national political stage in this current election. Without open dialogue surrounding the double standard that remains between the sexes, we can never hope to create an equitable community for ourselves and our children – a goal that far surpasses any single election, no matter how divisive this one may be. Moreover, by limiting our space for public disagreement, what else do we stand to lose as we head into voting day and beyond?

“Imagine the media treatment of Kamala Harris if she had five children by three different men.” Stop and actually imagine it. Imagine how far Harris would have made it in her very public career. District attorney of a top 20 U.S. city? Attorney General? U.S. Senator? Vice President? Not a chance. I was confronted with this quote at the start of Harris’ campaign all those long weeks ago, and not only has it stayed with me, it has grown. Imagine the treatment of Harris if she had 34 felony convictions or if she had filed bankruptcy multiple times. Imagine if she had paid off and slandered multiple people whom she had sexually assaulted. Imagine if she had inspired an attack on our nation’s capital, then stood by to watch the destruction. Imagine if she had worked to deny and sow doubt in America’s free and fair election process or refused to participate in our country’s long-standing tradition of a peaceful transfer of power.

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.

“Is that how we lived, then? But we lived as usual. Everyone does, most of the time. Whatever is going on is as usual. Even this is as usual, now. We lived, as usual, by ignoring. Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.” Offred in The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood Last week, I finally sat down to watch The Handmaid’s Tale based on Margaret Atwood’s 1985 dystopian novel. While the television series was released seven years ago, I have not been able to bring myself to sit before it, neither in print nor on film, until now. This particular work, this tale of subjugation and violence against women, I could not open for fear it would feel too real. I was not wrong. I have sat with too many women who have been violated in these ways, women who were reduced to bodies, stripped bare of feeling or choice. These women, these friends, were not unlike Atwood’s protagonist, Offred. In those unspeakable moments, they were diluted to just their physical form, Handmaids all of them, all of us. I have experienced this violation myself. I have been reduced to a body more times than I can recall. I do not wish to recall these times but only to warn that such dystopia is not so far away in some imagined work of fiction. It is right here. It always has been here, breathing just under the surface, leaking out in millions of ways upon millions of women. We have all been Offred in some form, though so many still confuse their oppressors with saviors, as does Atwood’s problematic character, Aunt Lydia. “There is more than one kind of freedom,” said Aunt Lydia. “Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from.”