Tag: Donald Trump

Finding hope in the moderate male.

Laura WildLeave a comment

Over the past few days I’ve been at a complete loss for words. In a state of shock, I went to bed on Tuesday night feeling alone, but knowing that I was far from it. I was completely shaken by the knowledge that America had elected such an ignorant and inane POTUS as Donald Trump, and I struggled to find any kind of silver-lining. Hillary Clinton’s concession speech helped to relight a fire in my soul, and I realized that this disappointment and setback was merely a taste of what women and minorities before me have felt since the dawn of time. As I watched my friends and family dust themselves off and begin to rally, I realized that wallowing in my fear was not going to make me any safer. My voice as a queer female has already been suppressed by that fear for too long, not to mention by the very demographic who have enabled this disastrous outcome.

What I found as the initial shock of the election faded was that these results are not as unbelievable as they first seemed. We live in an incredibly backwards country, one that has systematically oppressed racial minorities, immigrants, women and members of the LGBTQ community for too long, indeed. While we have made significant strides of progress, we are still embarrassingly behind many of our Western counterparts. This is the same rhetoric that has been flooding social media all week, I know, but there is good reason to keep the discussion going. If we (liberals, activists, decent human beings, etc.) intend on turning the tides once and for all, we have to convince the other half. I urge those who are privileged enough to threaten to pack up and move to another country and those who have gone on an unfriending-rampage against all Trump supporters to please think twice. There are people in this country who are desperate to stay here, terrified of being deported, and who need the support of their allies now more than ever. In order to turn this country around again in 2020 we can’t give up on each other, and we especially have to find a way to reach those who were so blinded by party loyalty that they couldn’t even vote against a poorly spoken nutcase.

In all honesty, the moderates have been more than a bit of a frustration for me during this election. There are some situations where it is great to stand in the middle of the road but I don’t think there is ever a time that it is morally valiant. That said, I know the two-party system is a huge problem and I wish our democracy worked better, but I’m not even going to go into how maddening it is that some democrats voted for a third party in this vital election; we already know what a mistake that was. Instead I am going to address the non-voters; what were you thinking? If you are young and uninformed or too lazy I can at least understand your excuses for being idle in the face of adversity, but to those who didn’t vote because “both of the candidates were so bad”, you seem to be hindered by sexism. There is no other explanation for even equating an intelligent and qualified albeit shady women to the highly under-qualified travesty that is Donald Trump, besides an intrinsic prejudice against women. You may try to hide it, you may not even be fully aware of it, but it’s there, and it’s just as toxic as outright male chauvinism if not worse. I’ll tell you why:

  1. The sexist in denial is the same person that enables male chauvinism by not condemning their peers, often defending them with a certain brotherly support that is as petty and juvenile as peer pressure.
  2. Female misogeny is a word that is becoming more popular than ever, stemming of course from the privileged white women who is in denial of the oppression that non-straight or non-white women face. Not to be confused with misandry, the female misogynist is a women that is hyper-feminized and condones the polarization of the sexes. The outdated belief that men and women are drastically different from one another is hugely detrimental to both genders, and once again enables intrinsic sexism. These are the type of women that voted directly against Hilary Clinton.
  3. Lastly, the ambivalent majority will continue to oppress minorities as long as their beliefs are backed up by conservative religious ideologies. It’s like a socially acceptable excuse to treat women poorly. Unfortunately, religion is at the root of many people’s prejudice toward women and is also to blame for demonizing the word “feminism”. It’s hard to combat this, because holy hell if people aren’t sensitive when you attack their religion! Sorry, I’ll attack any institution that threatens to limit women’s access to health care. *cracks knuckles*

I may sound like I am attacking only a specific group of people, and that’s the last thing I want to do. In fact, the straight white male demographic may itself be facing prejudice for the first time ever, and I know it’s not a good feeling. I already see a lot of my male friends on social media feeling obligated to prefix their entries with things like, “I know I am privileged and may not be able to relate to systemic oppression, but here’s why I’m saddened by this election.” I would hate for my anger to add to a new stereotype that labels a whole group of people as ignorant. Of course, social psychology tells us that all stereotypes are rooted in some kind of truth, and that truth is stemming from the fact that straight white males are largely responsible for the election of Donald Trump. Even so, we know that not all men find him acceptable. In fact many straight white men are appalled by all of the same things that I am, and it is those men that I urge to speak up! We want you on our side, we will not lose faith in you, and we need your support. Please don’t let defensiveness get in the way of activism, we feminists certainly don’t.

Last week I returned from my journey across the deep South expecting to find a much more enlightened pre-election atmosphere up here, but I was wrong. As I drove home I passed by one of the most disgusting displays that I have seen all year. A scarecrow tied to a cross with yellow caution tape had a picture of Hillary Clinton’s face stapled to it, had slurs written across the body and had its feet bound to a tire. A cardboard cutout of Trump has since been stolen from a makeshift podium that stood nearby, and several of the many campaign signs from the yard have been taken down. Still, the display remains in broad daylight, where children walk home from school every day and can often be seen pointing to it and laughing. The disservice many Americans have done to our country’s children is perhaps the saddest part of this election. I can only hope, as many generations before me have, that things are different for my own children one day. This is one story that I never wanted to be able to tell to my grandchildren, but now all I can do is join the fight to make something good come out of it. I hope we can all fight together, so that one day our Muslim, Hispanic, African American and LGBTQ brothers and sisters no longer have to live in fear.

 

 

Steps to Reduce Animal Suffering, Part 1: Dismantle the Patriarchy.

Laura Wild2 Comments

Seven cats and two dogs were beyond my help in the states of Texas and Louisiana. Using plastic bags and scraps of paper, sometimes cardboard boxes scavenged from nearby trashcans, I did my best to at least move them out of the road. I don’t really know why I felt so compelled to do so. Maybe because it forced me to acknowledge them, instead of just continuing on down the road like the very cars who had taken their lives. The act of carrying their bodies, many of them still warm, slowly but surely caused me to become used to the experience. I was their pallbearer by default; absent from their lives, yet somehow profoundly impacted by their deaths. Maybe I should have left them where they died, so that others would see them and slow down or drive more carefully. Unfortunately, the ammount of roadkill I saw on a daily basis in the rural South convinced me that most drivers were too entitled to care.

Entitelment is the word that comes to mind because of the numerous degrading experiences I have had as a female cyclist. I have been driven off of the road by several men in trucks, had thick plumes of exhaust deliberately blown in my face by countless men in trucks, and have received immeasurable unwanted attention from men both in and out of their trucks. It isn’t annoying, it is far past that- it is terrifying. If I have to watch one more man in a truck run over the body of a dead cat in the road I am going to explode. It is apparent that many drivers have no problem gambling with the life of a cyclist simply because we have the audacity to share the road with them, so it is not surprising that they seem to have complete disregard for the lives of animals on the road, too. I imagine it is incredibly painful to get hit by a car; and believe me, I have had plenty of time to imagine it. Sadly, I know these drivers are not stopping to check that the animals they hit are not suffering, because they can’t even be bothered to step on their brakes for the few seconds it takes to safely pass a cyclist.

This breaks my heart. I feel so overwhemed by the amount of animal suffering that I have witnessed in the past few months that I am completley exhausted. A recent conversation I had with a man in Alabama as I removed one of the aforementioned cats from the road sums up the type of blatant ignorance that I am referring to when I say “Southern Entitlement.” He wanted to know why I didn’t stop to move all road kill (squirrels, raccoons, armadillos, etc) from the road. I told him there were simply too many. He responded with the same level of stupidity that I encounter when people accuse me of being cruel to vegetables after finding out I am a vegetarian, and said, “Then you aren’t a real animal lover, are you?”

Oh yes, I am a real animal lover, and I am sick of that part of my charachter being used to discredit my rationality. It is not irrational to be kind, and yet I find myself constantly having to justify myself as an activist to much older people who think that being “middle of the road” is the only way to be a realist. What part of being a feminist, animal-loving liberal activist makes me weak? Could it be that all of these qualities challenge the patriarchy?

When it comes to understanding why a certain demographic seems to be at the root of these problems, I find myself constantly trying to avoid stepping on toes. So here’s my obligatory disclaimer; not all men are careless towards animals and creepy to young women, of course I know this! It has been my beleif for a long time that the patriarchy is nearly as detrimental and limiting to men as it is to women. In fact, it is the gentle, kind, and respectful men in my life that cause me to be so concerned with the toxic (and fragile) form of masculinity that is rampant in the South, particularly among far right-wing conservatives. How many of the trucks that drove me off the road were sporting Trump/Pence stickers? 3 out of 4. That seems incredibly relavent to me, so much so that I don’t think I need to moderate my opinions on the subject of male agression and the negative affect it has on the welfare of animals.

The latest stray puppy that I had the pleasure of rescuing from the middle of nowhere was a tiny brown pitbull named Hazel (see below). She, like many of the rescue dogs I have met in my personal life and on the Southern Tier, was terrified of men. How she developed this fear is only to be guessed at; maybe she was being molded into a fearsome watchdog, or physically abused in any number of ways. Her condition was made worse by the other men in my company when I discovered her, whose suggestions for her welfare involved throwing cookies at her, yelling at her, and slamming the van doors to scare her away. She was growling and appeared to be agressive, especially when the sherrif showed up and tried similar tactics to wrangle her. It wasn’t until they all left, and the women on my cycling team were left alone with her, that she emerged from her hiding place, wagged her tail, and let us rub her belly.

The agressive display of dominance that some men feel obligated to express could have cost this sweet pup her life. The sherriff told me that if he took her to the shelter and she growled, she would be euthanized. Another rescue I called said all pounds in the area were under orders to put down every pitbull they receive. It is evident to me that improper treatment is what causes this particular breed to become agressive in the first place. That was obvious yesterday as I watched Hazel cower in fear under the shelter of our company van.

Only by a stroke of luck did I come into contact with an organization called Lucky Puppy Rescue, and that is exactly what Hazel was when I brought her there. Run by two women who care for about fifty dogs out of the kindness of their hearts, I was incredibly releived when they were able to take this puppy in. I could see right away that the dogs in their care were given the treatment they deserved; they roamed freely together in harmony, were well behaved and trained, and hardly barked when I arrived with their new playmate. Almost all of them were rescued strays, and almost half of them were pitbulls. That sounds like a miracle to me.

Below is a picture of the owners of this rescue, Teri and Becky, with a few of their dogs. They are running their rescue solely on donations, so if you are able please help them out, I can’t think of a worthier cause. I have also included a link to their webpage.

I leave this entry on somewhat of a sour note, as I try to remain optimistic about the conditions I have seen in the deep South. I can indeed confirm that chivalry is not dead, but neither is racism, sexism, classism and homophobia. However, a lot of innocent animals are. While this reality is true in every part of the country, this area seems to have an uneven distribution of ignorant and entitled people.

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Visit theluckypuppy.org to donate.