An American having a birthday in November–particularly the first ten days of the month–sometimes celebrates or suffers from reasons not to do so. I know first-hand how this happens, because I am one such Scorpio dealing with the fallout of the recent election.
Second worst birthday ever. The first was back in 2016.
Belated, early, or not, the outcome of how this humungous chunk of ground on which we live will be run politically for four years can cause elation or depression on one’s birthday, depending on the side you’re on. Our presidents tend to swing like a pendulum between our two main parties (Democratic and Republican), with one side running for four years and the other then taking over for the next four. Usually the incoming party tries to reverse what they feel is damage done in the prior administration, so taxes, policies and international relations tend to fluctuate in kind. For most of my life, however, our country ran reasonably well when run by either party. Then suddenly, somebody swept in and came into power, and as I’ve watched the past ten years unfold, I’ve never seen such a disturbing turn of events.
After the 2016 election results became my first worst birthday present ever, I watched as throngs of extremists praised far-right ideas and ignored what our forefathers would have recognized as rantings and fascist concepts. Men with no jobs, who could have had jobs taken by immigrant workers, chanted against their presence while ignoring the fact that, without those jobs being held by somebody, food and other merchandise would never leave the farms.
The worst of it? The overturning of abortion rights for women paved the way to a futuristic Handmaid’s Tale society which will glut men’s egos with what they perceive as power. When I looked at the inordinate expansion of red states which caused the election this past week to swing to the right, I was horrified. Not even half of the states were willing to elect a woman to office. Either the women didn’t vote on Election Day, or they agreed with the men, which would be even more horrifying.
What woman in her right mind would want to elect a person who thinks that, if she were walking down the street minding her own business, and a man sexually assaulted her, the possibility of pregnancy should be of no concern? She should simply go home and wait to see if she is going to give birth to a baby for whom her attacker would have no responsibility.
Already men are taunting women with the mantra, “Your body, my choice.” They’re not being deleted from social media. Is Mark Zuckerberg that afraid to put his foot down? Maybe the goal is to put the collective masculine foot down on the throats of women.
The measure of what made a man a man used to be his epiphany of where women exist in their universe. For ages, men have been afraid of women, and not in the cowardly sense, but in the way that suggests their awe but admiration of what we contribute as the “opposite sex” to society. In ancient times, women held positions of respect. In the deep South, the women ran the household and served as the societal enforcers (viewers of Gone With the Wind will know just how powerful Scarlett’s mother Ellen O’Hara was). Women have shared battlefields (Molly Pitcher), given their lives for science (Marie Curie), penned timeless literary works (already covered in said adapted movie) and proven their worth in settling the West, expanding sports and much more throughout history.
Anybody who has seen a movie from the Frank Sinatra era knows that women supported men; the post-war household was run by a woman who cooked meals from scratch, minded the children, cleaned and laundered and shopped, and still kept every hair on her head in the perfect style and greeted her man at the door looking her best, with the newspaper ready to be read and slippers to comfort his tired feet. That was no made-up concept; the men crossed the ocean to defend our nation and the world against a formidable foe, and while they were gone, women filled men’s jobs at home, put on work clothes and got themselves dirty, burnt and injured to support the war effort. When the men returned, women had proven their worth, and stepped aside to be equal partners while filling their original roles.
And now this may all change. Images of present-day Iraq or Pakistan could become this nation’s new norm. Can this truly be what American men want? Subjugation? Free-range denigration?
If that is true, I will spend every birthday until the last one content in no man earning my respect.
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