“Look, honey, those girls are going to march for your rights.” Those were the words spoken by a beaming mother, to her smiling daughter, no more than seven years old, upon seeing five of my friends en route to the Women’s March in Washington D.C. Seeing this mother’s unassailable pride for her daughter in such a quiet moment, so far removed physically and tonally from the organized chaos of the protest, carried the most weight in my heart. Right there, I saw that what my friends and I were doing mattered to somebody, and it gave me the deepest satisfaction knowing it was coming from a place of such hope and love.
I attended the march because I believe quite strongly in the empowerment of women, driven by my own hope that my sister, my cousins, my female friends, and (Lord willing) my future daughters and nieces will grow up with the confidence that they could conquer the world – metaphorically at least. That was my reason for being in Washington two weekends ago, but I quickly realized that externally, my own rationale had been misinterpreted. Suddenly, I was being told that because I was a willing participant in the Women’s March, I was now a supporter and willing participant in the advancement of causes X, Y, and Z by matter of association; by proxy, all because I showed up to a march not anticipating the full implication of my being there. I find this concept ridiculous.
What I find the most ironic about this claim, in relation to the march in particular, is that the backlash facing its attendees has come exclusively from conservative sources, the same ones that have been so vehemently opposing claims by the left that a vote for Donald Trump was a normalization of racism, sexism, xenophobia, and so on and so forth. You know the spiel. I find that claim by the left to be similarly flawed. It’s a discussion for another time.
The irony here, however, to assert that being an active participation in a movement is somehow equivalent to supporting all aspects of said movement is an argument I find to be mostly unpersuasive. Isn’t the world too complicated for one political party to claim a complete moral authority on its behalf? Every issue deserves careful consideration and detailed examination. To assume that a coalition of any kind will be able to place all of its members in nice, tidy boxes is an unrealistic expectation.
Voting for a president, for example, can be an extremely tough judgment call. Our most recent election shows what happens when both leading candidates are burdened with checkered pasts and a handful of policies able to cast dark shadows over the whole of their campaigns. Voters faced a moral conundrum in 2016, unparalleled in recent memory, stuck with a choice many likened to “choosing the lesser of two evils.” This goes beyond the proverbial “skeletons in the closet,” beyond “grab ‘em by the pussy,” and beyond shady corporate ties. Not every Trump voter wanted the wall, not every Hillary voter shares her position on abortion, but both groups of voters exist. Did they sacrifice their morality and intellect by making a thoughtful, no doubt difficult calculation by selecting a candidate who they fail to align with on every issue down the ticket? I certainly don’t think so, but is it messy, of course.
When I showed up to the Women’s March, I was there for my own reasons, realized beautifully by the image of a mother wanting nothing less than the world for her daughter, full of hope that she would grow up capable of being exactly who she wants to be, untouchable by whatever malevolent forces that be that would have her believe she is deserving of anything less. There was a bevy of other causes represented at the march. I was on board with some, not so much with others, but they didn’t speak for me. I speak for me. Don’t call me what I’m not.