As I write my first draft of this column sitting in my basement, my wife Marsha and several of her friends are upstairs working on the homemade signs they will carry in the march affirming women on Saturday in downtown Chicago. There are hundreds of these marches throughout the United States.
My initial innate cynicism and skepticism required me to bite my tongue so as to avoid my typical smartass comments over a bunch of women in their 60s wandering around the Loop on a cold January day (which turned out to be a warm January day). But as I thought more about it, and listened to Marsha, I changed my discordant tune.
There is something quite significant about thousands of women coming from all over Chicago to protest, to affirm their worth and value. I appreciate that women of all demographics are upset and angry, but these older women have an experience that others cannot have.
It took me a while to figure out what is going on here. If you were a woman born in 1950, it was 1968 when you graduated high school, and 1972 when you graduated from college. You entered the work force and got your first promotion in the 1970s.
A woman’s world was very different then than now. If misogyny could be measured, it was 2.5 times worse in 1975 than it is in 2017. The workplace and social scenes were very different then. Words and actions that are taboo today were close to the norm back then.
These women were regularly confronted with leering, ogling, grabbing and insinuating. Even worse it was the woman’s problem. The ambivalence and uncertainty of a changing legal and social code made self-help a woman’s only recourse. You avoided being in an office alone. If you were assaulted, you told yourself that you hadn’t been assaulted.
But then your life got better. Laws were passed. Women became doctors, lawyers and CEOs. Why, a woman was pretty much a lock to be the first female president in 2016.
But then the unthinkable happened. A churlish buffoon won the election. Even worse, he won even though he boasted of grabbing women by their genitalia. A score of women came forward to testify to his sexually inappropriate conduct. He boasted of the size of his penis. And yet he still won. How could this be happening? Past nightmares were being revisited. Time was being reversed. The hope for a brighter future for their daughters began to dim.
So what were these women of a certain age to do? They did what women have always done. They gathered together, and sought a shared solace and consolation. Then they did the only thing they really could have done. They marched to affirm that the clock was not going to be turned back, and that they were deserving of respect and dignity.
I could not be prouder of my wife and her friends.
