It Was An Issue After All. Obviously.

Skip this post if you're not up for a rant.

I try very hard to avoid the news. But lately I have been following a story that is both contemporary and age old, the story of the perennial struggle against sexism that is being played out valiantly and violently in Iran. The rebellion/revolution began when a young woman named Mahsa Amini visiting Tehran from her town in Kurdistan was arrested for “improper hijab.” I read that a lock of her hair had escaped the hijab. That was enough for her to be arrested and beaten to death in prison. News of the murder sparked protests in Kurdistan that spread around the country. The protesters demanded freedom from the oppressive laws regarding women’s dress, but that grew into a larger push for ending the Islamic Republic and its punitive rule. Many of the protesters are girls, teenagers, and children. Over 300 have been murdered to date. THREE HUNDRED. In spite of a media blackout and cell phone jamming, pictures of murdered girls flash around the world. It is sickening and stirring; how very brave these girls are. They are willing to be killed to express their frustration with a system that views and treats them as less than. It’s one of the most incredible rebellions in my lifetime. Children’s crusades are always particularly stirring as their commitment and ardor is grounded in an intuitive sense that they deserve more, even before life has knocked them down. These girls know that the laws governing their every move are sick laws, and are willing to die to bring this message to the world. I am in awe.

I have been watching with the heavy sense that what’s happening there is a sliding door away from what has been happening here. It’s worth noting that Iran before the Ayatollah Ali Khameini was installed as supreme leader, women in Iran lived on a par with free women around the globe. Afterward they were sent to hide under cloths covering their hair and their bodies—let me be clear right here that the right to wear a hijab by choice is as valid and should be as protected as the right to not wear one—they were for the most part not allowed to enter the work force and they are subject to constant harassment by the morality police. And more injustices and horrors.

I can’t believe I am writing this, when what I planned to write about is Mavis Gallant or Elena Ferrante. But in light of the Iranian protests and the recent election here I feel compelled to say a word about a line of discourse this week, the bets being made during this election cycle that "abortion” as it is called in shorthand would be already a forgotten issue, replaced by “the economy,” “inflation,” and “gas prices.” (Was Didion in this cool burn mode when she used quote marks?)

The assumption being that women are over having our rights taken away. We women identifying as women and our allies, though we may not have liked it, have already accepted Dobbs, or delegated it to a less important voting issue than the feeding the family complex. Or so the argument went.

I was alive during what has come to be called the second wave of the feminist movement. I was young but exposed to the ideas swirling around and had the understanding that what women wanted was liberty underwritten by the law, opportunity guaranteed by the power structures, and above all a fundamental change to the way things worked. Liberated women would liberate men, institutions, government, corporations, the country, the world. Everyone would live a fuller and more meaningful life and be safe and get what they need. No more hierarchies. These ideas didn’t prevail—such ideas rarely do—and from what I observed the corporate world saw a way to get cheaper labor into the work force while convincing women that by living like men they were living better. I never bought that.

What I did buy are policy changes, such as Roe, Lilly Ledbetter, the ERA, etc. In doing research for Fellowship Point I read a lot about the laws governing women’s rights to own land and to have a say over land we owned, and no surprise the history was ugly. It wasn’t until 1900 that women in all states were given (!) a say in what happened on land they owned. This fact became the impetus for a phrase I repeated to myself as I was composing the novel—women walk lightly on the land. Historically speaking we weren’t even ankle deep in dirt. This lack of centuries of attachment afforded a different kind of freedom; there is an untold story of women land donors, women who started national parks, land trusts, and I hope more in the future do what Agnes and Polly did in the end. (No spoilers here.)

Liberties can evaporate quickly. They did in Iran. That swiftness, though, is usually a long time in the planning. The threat to democracy we are seeing now didn’t begin with Trump. It takes decades of strategizing to pack the Supreme Court. Fanatics can be very patient.

Full rights for women is a sign of health in a society. Removing those rights indicate illness and vulnerability. A vulnerable society can fall, and easily.

Who are they who think we would forget so soon about Roe? The same who have fantasies about fetuses? The same who think they know more, understand the world better, should be the ones to call the shots?

Or are they the ones who simply are bored and want something to happen, like overturning the democracy we have in favor of something seemingly new, a facist/racist/sexist regime?

I am well aware that as a white woman never forced to emigrate, never in a war zone, never poor, that I am lucky and my luck has afforded privilege beyond most people who have ever lived. But I am also aware every day of life that as a woman I am hated and suspected to the point where I sometimes wonder if the hatred stopped the world would end too. I feel it is the heartbeat. It’s always there, everywhere. It is the economy. Will there be a woman president in my lifetime? Who will bet against me if I say no?

I know that is reality. But I don’t ever again want to hear that I’ve probably forgotten Dobbs by now. The Iranian women and girls didn’t forget that they were once freer, that they by rights should be free. People want lower gas prices, but no one is fooled or appeased by them. Exit polls found that many people voted based on candidates’ positions on abortion. OF COURSE.

The long term plan to undo rights and suppress women is paired with movement toward a massive reckoning. We have been free enough in the past fifty years to be mostly in line. But if more laws are overturned and rights are abrogated—watch out. In the meantime I never again want to hear that a rights issue is a non-issue. They wish!

Give me liberty, give me the benefit of the doubt that I can keep my rights and the gas price in mind at the same time, and give me the opportunity to make mistakes and bear the burden of civilized emotions, such as regret. I am a full adult. I can handle it. We all can, given the chance.