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Selling Cookies and Laughing Out Loud: Another Day, Another Fight for Girls

Selling Cookies and Laughing Out Loud: Another Day, Another Fight for Girls

Last updated on: May 3, 2017 at 3:07 pm by Erin Wathen

Selling Cookies and Laughing Out Loud: Another Day, Another Fight for Girls 2017-05-03T15:07:31-07:00 Erin Wathen

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EVERY DAY. Every day it’s something. Something to remind us that all of our systems of power are designed to restrict women. Civilization as we know it is ordered to control women’s bodies, voices, and range of authority. Say all you want that we have laws to protect our rights, and that we have come farther than our grandmothers ever dreamed, etc. The Patriarchy is alive and well.

Exhibit A: The Archdiocese of Kansas City just announced that the Catholic Church in the metro area will sever its ties with the Girl Scouts of America. Church authorities cite that the GSA’s values are “reflective of many of the troubling trends in our secular culture.”

Gross.

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What they mean is that the Girl Scouts refuse to discriminate against LGBT people. That they promote strong women in leadership. And that they don’t teach girls to be ashamed of their bodies. They’ve also drummed up some mostly imaginary connections between GSA and Planned Parenthood. Which, not for nothing, are groundless. But even if there were connections–well, this wades into that whole complex wilderness of the inherent evil of women’s anatomy, doesn’t it? Of course, you can say it’s about abortion. But it’s really about that ever problematic uterus. Or rather, the problematic not-having-of-a-penis.

Ultimately, organized religion will always find a way to stifle the rising strength of women and girls.

I’m going to echo what a clergy friend of mine said, and call on pastors of more progressive churches to provide gathering space for newly-homeless troops in the KC area. It’s a small resistance, but a huge contribution to the building of community and the empowering of girls–the real values at the heart of the Girls Scouts organization, and many of our churches. (Also, I’d imagine there might be some free cookies in play, with such an arrangement. Which, values aside, I am always down for free cookies).

Meanwhile, back at band camp…The Church is not the only institution to worship at the altar of misogyny. Because right next to the Girl Scouts in my newsfeed, I see this gem: the U.S. Department of Justice is pursuing prosecution of a woman who laughed during Jeff Sessions’ confirmation hearing.

When Senator Richard Shelby spoke of Sessions’ legacy of “treating all Americans equally under the law is clear and well-documented,” activist Desiree Fairooz laughed out loud. (We feel you, girl). She is now being charged with contempt of whatever and obstruction of the thing… I mean, the particulars don’t matter nearly so much as the fact that they are trying a woman for laughter.

Just…wut.

I’ve been afraid to watch the Handmaid’s Tale. But I figure this is pretty much the gist. We are living it. Who needs to watch that business on TV? Give me a box of wine and some West Wing reruns, so I can at least escape into a more progressive reality for an hour of my damn day.

I know it’s just another day in a thousand-year string of days. But I am weary. I’m weary of the veto pen that decides the future of our procreative lives; I’m weary of the Church that silences and shames; I’m weary of laws that do not protect us from violence and abuse; I’m weary of the tv screens and magazine pages that define our worth within stifling confines of beauty; I’m tired of the proverbial table at which we are forever fighting for a place… or rather, fighting to defend the place where we’ve already been sitting, for decades now.

It doesn’t look like it used to. It’s not the Mad Men days of workplace ass-grabbing, the cigar-smoking back room boys clubs, and the male-only restricted zones of education and property ownership. Those days are past. That stuff is illegal. Technically.

In theory. For the most part…

But in a thousand little ways, we are still not quite there. Our healthcare premiums, our wage discrepancies, and our underrepresentation in government are just a few of the ways that we are punished daily for our chromosomes, and made to fight just a little harder for what our brothers, husbands and sons can take for granted.

It’s just another day. But this one day in the newsfeed tells the story of the everyday ways that women still have to fight systems that do not quite, as it turns out, regard us as whole people. It’s a reminder that the everyday expressions of feminism have to evolve constantly, to keep up with the constantly evolving landscape of misogyny. And that’s what my next book is going to be about. Coming Spring of 2018 with WJK. Title tbd. In the meantime…

She persisted.

She laughed.

And she sold the shit out of those cookies.

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