This Sunday morning, I read in an alternate-news opinion article that “We need women to unite and turn the tide of events.” I agree with the theory that women CAN change outcomes, that women HAVE power to change outcomes, that women MUST unite to create positive change…if we in our communities, in this nation, and across other nations WANT to give peace, justice, liberty, and happiness to future generations. And I wonder in this moment, as I drink a second cup of hot coffee, as I sit in my pajamas at my laptop, where the sun shines through my east-facing bedroom window, whether I can approach this topic with positivity and argue in women’s favor. That is my goal for the next hour.
Women can change outcomes. This is truth.
Women are the grown girls who were taught subservience and compliance, encouraged to use femininity in their favor, praised for nice behaviors, reprimanded for rebellion, asked to be quiet and obey. Not every household, nor every community instructed their girls in these ways. However, most families and most societies cling to the cultural belief that their boys and superior and entitled to different treatment. Girls will become nurturers, wives, mothers, and sacrifice their greatest potential for The Greater Good. However, many girls raised thusly decided at some time in their lives to change their destinies. And their achievements testify to the fact that women can change outcomes.
They became nurturers in multiple ways. By supporting other women and women’s businesses, by developing social programs that strengthen families and communities, by defending the vulnerable and defying the powerful who exploit the vulnerable, by encouraging creative and innovative projects, by caring for aging parents and siblings, by cherishing and promoting the arts, by educating the children and caring for the sick…Women take their abilities seriously. While men tend to leave their youth behind with regret and resentment, women tend to bloom and grow in their passing years. Parents and society raised their boys to run over other people, developing their competitive skills, honing those skills in sports and the classroom and in business, later realize that competitive skills only work when a team of like-minded men back each other. Their personal and community relationships require cooperation, nurturing, collaboration, personal attention. Oops!
So…the girls who were taught to cooperate, nurture others, collaborate for positive outcomes, and pay close honest attention to their friends and families HAVE the skills to change the fractured, corrupt, indecent, merciless, and inequitable outcomes that men leave in their paths toward selfish endeavors.
Women have power to change outcomes. This is truth.
Women have power in numbers. We outnumber adult men, not just in our communities but also in every nation. We outnumber men in our schools and colleges, in industries like healthcare and religion, in the arts and humanities, in social work, and as small business owners. We are the parents in most American households. We are the majority…of underpaid teachers, journalists, defense lawyers, healthcare workers, babysitters, caregivers, artists, biologists, and environmentalists. While many women climb to the top in their fields, many others support their climb. Women KNOW experientially since childhood that no one struggles alone, that every achievement requires a trail of tears and an army of positive support. Women do not need to outnumber their colleagues at the top; they need only to use their power in numbers to defeat the male sociopaths and idiots at the top.
Women have power in resilience and empathy. We have the advantage over men in that we are genuinely interested in the lives and needs of others. They taught us to relieve other’s pain, to lend assistance, to offer our service. We know how to do servant leadership; we invented it. We know how to adapt and make-do and fill in the gaps; we figured those skills at an early age. Our abilities to serve and lead with empathy, to live and work unselfishly, to bleed and birth and wash the dying, ARE the abilities that empower us.
Women must unite to create positive change. This is truth.
Women must unite with other women. This is nondebatable. In most historical instances when women chose to rise by climbing into favor with powerful men, the women experienced defeat.
Women who cling to powerful men are the men’s servants, not their equals. Examples: Secretary Hillary Clinton made too much of her loyal support for former president Bill Clinton, for the Democratic party male leadership, for the male-dominant capitalist system, for corporate leadership, for the wealthy class. She was highly qualified for the job she sought but she was a servant. Vice President Kamala Harris also earned the right to run as candidate for POTUS. However, she also clung to capitalism and militarism like a good political centrist. Had she used her powers to unite women, she might have won the 2024 election. Instead, Harris tried to unite women with powerful men, women of color with powerful white women, democratic progressive ideas with capitalist white supremacist ideas. White men and white women gave their votes to the right-wing fascists.
Compromise is different from collaboration. Compromise happens when the weaker relinquish their power. Collaboration is powerful. Women must find new ways to unite against the cruel, fascist, capitalist, white supremacist forces that are winning all the compromises. Unity among all women will happen when women stop trying to please powerful men.
Many women were raised to help themselves by teasing, manipulating, and seducing men. That dishonesty was barely tolerable when women willingly used those lies to find and keep a prominent husband. Most women – despite what internet influencers, film producers, religious leaders, and some successful women tell us – deem those behaviors as absolutely, undeniably repugnant. Women who compromise their integrity are to be shamed, not congratulated. Those behaviors will not unite all women because those behaviors are extremely divisive. Men use those behaviors to subjugate women. Sexual predators use those behaviors to rape girls.
We live in dangerous times, on the precipice of another world war, of capitalism gone amok, of white Christian male supremacy surviving all attempts since the last world war to subvert it. Women must unite to change the outcomes. To bring us back from the precipice. To defeat the men and the powerful women who brought us to this.