To ask that women unite across a nation and in their communities is to assume that women have commonalities that outnumber their differences, shared aims more compelling that their individual ones. The assumption seems plausible. The assumption is not based on similar physical features – these do not matter where people recognize and accept numerous gender identities and characteristics. Physical features and individual styles aside, all together and each one who self classifies as Woman does so because Woman is distinguishable from Man and that acknowledgement is the core to this discussion.
Woman sees, touches, smells, and tastes her surroundings with keener senses that does Man. She must acquire understanding(s) on which her survival and victories rely. Where she must compete with creatures larger and physically stronger than she, she must also protect herself from them. Man is woman’s most deadly enemy. Although most cultures and religions assert man’s role as woman’s and society’s protector, the claim yields unsubstantial evidence. Woman has since human’s earliest days relied chiefly on her own skills to protect herself and her children. Experience, their mothers’ and grandmothers’ teachings, practice, unity with other women, and their ability to employ the full spectrum of their senses created a gender that is superior to man. She became superior because she would otherwise perish.
Women outnumber men because women are survivors. Whereas men engage in risky behaviors from the time they learn to walk, the risks they take are categorically clumsy, selfish, mercenary, self-entitled, immature, irrational, and arrogant. I cannot deny that wars deplete male populations; that is self-evident. However, men’s behaviors contribute to their early deaths.
Male-dominated cultures teach men how to be selfish, how to usurp their unearned authority, how to subjugate the weaker and smaller. Male-dominated cultures do not teach men empathy, how to serve and nurture others, how to develop their senses and emotions, how to tolerate and appreciate The Other, how to compromise and collaborate for the greater good. Unity in male-dominated cultures like the USA is a misnomer. Unity among men is a means to a selfish end, as is their fabricated unity with women. Women, especially educated and knowledgeable older women, know this is true. Men in male-dominated households and societies cannot help but become the resentful, angry, lazy, egocentric, immature fools we see in the U.S. today – as ICE, private militia, basement dwellers, online soldiers, rapists and abusers, incompetent and willfully ignorant leeches. Society taught them to use brute force as a survival skill. However, few societies now tolerate much less reward brute force. They cannot survive because they haven’t learned the survival skills that matter most, empathy for and collaboration with others unlike themselves.
Women comprehend how society and culture must change. Our children’s and young adults’ education must replace the priorities that wreck our democracy and destabilize our communities…the military industry, private industry tax subsidies, money in politics, wealth that flows upward…and demand more public schools, increased funding for public education, better educators and education priorities, wider options in courses and learning opportunities, education that meets the needs of every learner, education that truly leaves no child behind others.
Women can unite behind a Public Education K-16 Initiative. We realize that male domination at all levels and in all forms – white supremacy, corporation versus worker supremacy, pedophilia, rape, physical and emotional abuse, injustice, and authoritarianism – is learned and reinforced in church pews, family homes, school classrooms, and school sports programs. The school systems that run disguised school-to-prison pipelines also raise young, privileged men who approve of those pipelines, mass incarceration, exploitation, and modern enslavement. The school systems that fight for Christian, ‘Bible-based’ education, restrictive enrollment and participation policies, public dollars for private use, book bans and trans-athlete exclusion also raise young, privileged men who believe in ‘might makes right’, white Christian male supremacy, and a society wherein only the privileged benefit from the work and struggle of others.
If women must choose one or two priority initiatives on which to build a united force against the white wealthy Christian male fascism that we are experiencing today, then choose Public Education and Healthcare. Women from all backgrounds can be convinced that their personal freedoms, their children’s futures, and their stabler stronger communities rely on better schools and healthcare. Survival of their families and communities is at stake. Because women are survivors, women will unite around issues that promise progress.