You Might Just Be A Fucking Bitch

“You can...project an image to the world of being a family man and accost women without remorse and with a sense of impunity.” Rep Ocasio-Cortez “...it happens every day.” (transcript)

not my image - find it here

I was in first or second grade when I learned this very scary secret about men. A white girl living in a suburb of Chicago, white men ruled my little world. It was the late 80s and I had a sweet acid-washed jean jacket. Above the left breast pocket, I had a very, very cool collection of pins, most prominently, one of a backlit Michael Jackson in a white suit. Also piercing the denim, almost hidden in the pop culture explosion, was a tiny, silver, brushed metal pin molded into the shape of two tiny baby feet. It was an anti-abortion pin. The feet represented the size of an “actual baby” that was recently conceived. Get it? How could you murder those little feet?

My parents had a controversial marriage in that my mom is an “Irish” Catholic from Wisconsin and my dad is a Chicago born Lutheran. From preschool to 8th grade I attended Catholic school after what my sister and I used to call, “the only battle mom ever won.” The two faiths have more than a few things in common (though you wouldn’t know it living in our house), and being staunchly anti-abortion is one of them. I don’t know how it came about, but one weekend it was decided that my sister and I would accompany my dad to an anti-abortion demonstration organized by his church.

The protest was held on Roosevelt Road, the busiest street in our town. Sporting my jean jacket (gotta look good!), I stood on the side of the road holding a sign someone had handed me. I don’t remember what my sign said, but I do remember feeling excited to be doing something new and different and also to be spending time with my dad who, from what I could tell, was a busy businessman. Somehow, I ended up standing between two men who were not my dad but easily could have been. Like him, they were white, middle class, conservative - just picture Congressman Ted Yoho or Roger Williams in 1988. They were a mirror of virtually every authority figure in my small life. Good men. Church men. Men who ran things.

Cars were honking and otherwise showing their support or displeasure with our message and this surprised me. After all, at 8 years old, I had no context for what was really going on. The men on either side of me waved and gave a thumbs-up to supporters. One pretty young woman drove by and I thought she sort of looked like my babysitter. Like many young girls I idolized older “girls” and dreamed of being a grown-up college student one day. She honked and somehow shared her displeasure, nothing profane, but she was not showing her support for our cause. Suddenly, from the man to my left, “That. Fuc-KING. BITCH.” He was drenched in contempt. Startled out of my daydream, I stared up at him, terrified. The man on my right spat, “She probably had TEN abortions.” Man to my left, “May she burn in hell.” My head was buzzing. I had never heard an adult speak so contemptuously, and with profanity about another person in all of my life. I had just seen the secret misogyny of (white) men and it left me in a stunned silence, watching the cars zip by, praying that this thing was almost over.

Of course, I realized soon enough that it’s not a secret at all! It’s just accepted and ignored. It’s true what AOC said, this is “... not about one incident. It is cultural. It is a culture of lack of [accountability], of accepting of violence and violent language against women, and an entire structure of power that supports that.”

After this happened, I felt like that little feet pin was poisoning my jacket. My very cool jacket. The one like older kids wore. And while I never wore that jacket again, it did not protect me from being the recipient of the exact same phrase, and others, at the hands of men, both strangers and those known to me as professors, bosses, co-workers, and even boyfriends. Each one protected by a cloak of impunity. A multi-layered cloak. That is why it feels so good to see AOC on the floor, calling these men out on what we all already know - that white men (who inherently have power within the patriarchy) hate women (who want any bit of power at all) and it’s bubbling just below the surface.

In fact, if you’re not the virgin mother of god, you might just be a fucking bitch.