I wasn’t sure I could write this and get it out in any time or form that mattered, and then last night I had a dream where I was yelling, I have to get this piece done! And so, subconscious, here I am. It’s raw, but here it is.
Where are you, men?
I recently read a remarkable novel, The Trees, by Percival Everett. My friend lent me her copy, and I don’t yet have mine (but will), so this next part is paraphrased from memory. In one part of the story, a young, successful, prolific academic meets a centagenarian woman who has spent her life documenting every lynching across the country. Her office is lined with file cabinets filled with individual files for every single person lynched throughout US American history. The professor has recently published what is perceived to be the source on lynchings in the U.S., but her response to him is the thing that she was surprised to find missing in his book was the emotion. He says something about the book being academic, and therefore necessarily emotionless, but she says to him that sometimes it is ok to let out the rage.
That line has stuck with me.
Will I let it out here? I don’t know. First, as a woman, I’ve been trained since birth to be a keeper of the peace. Second, coming at people with rage tends to have the opposite effect of what I’m hoping for. And yet, I am stunned at myself in this current scenario – where is my rage? Perhaps that’s the wondering I should be entering, but today, I, like that professor, will stay true to my initial wondering. There is so much at stake.
Where have you gone?
Right now, right here, I’m holding my arms out and my hands open to you and asking,
Men, where are you?
I’m hoping that you can look in my eyes, and both feel and hear my words, all of the heart I am putting in them, and that you will pause and ask yourself the same question:
Man, where am I?
I am writing to you as a woman in your life
I am holding my arms out, and I am holding my hands open, can you see me? As your friend, your sister, your daughter, your mother, your grandmother, your aunt, your girlfriend, your daughter in law, your wife, your best friend’s mother, your best friend’s girlfriend, your best friend’s wife, your best friend’s daughter, your best friend’s aunt, your best friend’s daughter in law, your daughter’s best friend, your son’s best friend, your son’s girlfriend, I am writing to you as every woman you have loved, will love, will know, will never know.
There are many women you love, right?
Well, I am writing on behalf of all of them to ask, Where are you?
And to say, We need you.
Picture your daughter. Your wife. Your mother. Any woman you love and whose future you care for. Now, allow yourself to get uncomfortable for a minute and let me or any woman you love truly, or even all of us, look you deep in the eyes. Maybe close your eyes for a minute. Close your eyes and imagine looking her, me, us in the eyes.
Did you do it? It’s important.
Now, the next part.
This is critical for you to understand. Right now. Today. This is an extremely dangerous time for women.
We have normalized the danger
I’m about to tell you something you already know. Try to read it as though for the first time. Because somehow we’ve made it blah blah blah in mainstream culture and IT IS NOT. IT SIMPLY CANNOT BE BLAH BLAH BLAH.
Eight years ago, Donald Trump, running as the Republican nominee for president, was shone on live tape saying this (please read every word slowly, imagine reading it out loud to your daughter or granddaughter):
“I moved on her, and I failed. I’ll admit it. I did try and fuck her…. I moved on her like a bitch, but I couldn’t get there, and she was married,” he said. “You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful— I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ‘em by the pussy. You can do anything.”
Days later, half the nation voted him into office.
Now, as a man, I’m sure most of you thought it was awful he said this. It was.
Some of you though (I know because you posted it on Facebook or didn’t take on your friends when they posted it on your page), thought it was just locker room talk. Irrelevant.
I wonder how many of you are awake at night thinking of it now? I wonder how many of you think of it in a real way at all? Only you can answer this for yourself.
It’s still real. It’s not irrelevant.
As a woman
I want to try to share with you what that was like for women to hear this. It was ground shaking. It was so ground shaking that we believed a man who said this would never be elected. I cannot describe the faces of my high school students the morning after the election where he was. Those students were your children.
Every person has women in their lives who have been raped. That includes you, men — you have women in your life who have been raped. They may not have told you. Most of us women know, though.
For a rape victim, it’s hard to get past the shame (one of my friend’s husbands believes it’s a woman’s fault if this happens and he is not alone in this thinking) because there is so much cultural shame put on a woman for a man forcing himself on her. But when a woman does, or chooses to talk anyway, she shares it with her friends. If this door hasn’t been opened in your marriage, did you know that your wife (or daughter or mother) may have been raped? Or assaulted?
Because most of us women have had men grab us, say sexual things to us, follow us, press up against us, try to push us past our no, say we’re asking for it, make us shut up or lose our jobs. Most of us. This sexual onslaught is really really real, and to understand it as a man, you must try hard to imagine what this is like because it does not happen to you. (Yes, there are exceptions)
But now: picture your daughter, niece, granddaughter, sister, etc. Yes.
This is their world. And though it was getting better and finally there was legislation to protect women (a whole other discussion because if a woman presses charges it is her sexual past that’s dragged under the public microscope), in 2016, half our nation thought the lines:
“I moved on her, and I failed. I’ll admit it. I did try and fuck her…. I moved on her like a bitch, but I couldn’t get there, and she was married,” he said. “You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful— I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ‘em by the pussy. You can do anything.”
weren’t a big deal. Or a big enough deal. Or more important than other issues. But as Trump swept the election, I was not the only mother who answer the phone to a very quiet adult daughter’s voice saying, “Mommy.”
Half the country elected a man who said it was ok to grab an unsuspecting woman by the pussy.
Look at your daughter in the eye and tell her you agree with that.
Look at your granddaughter.
Look at me.
Oh, there it is, there’s the rage.
Look at any of us and tell us what you began to do the day the video was released to actively campaign on our behalf. Sadly, and yet critically, eight years later it is not too late and you are given the opportunity to add to or revise that answer.
The irony
Men who think it’s not ok for a woman to get an aborition think it’s ok for her to be raped. Because yes, that is what that line signaled. Grabbing a woman by the pussy when she has requested it is a precursor to rape and it is full on sexual assault, and since 2016 that very president has been convicted by a court of law for thrusting his fingers up an unwilling woman’s vagina — which is sexual assault, and in some states rape.
Look in your daughter or granddaughter’s eyes after a man has done this to her and tell her it’s ok. I bet you can’t.
There have been countless repercussions to that election, and one incredibly significant one when it comes to the laws of the land and how they are equitable or not for all Americans is that we have a Supreme Court Justice who was accused of rape, and now (including Trump’s own bragging about it) we know that myriad evidence that came in during his confirmation hearings to corroborate that claim plus other assaults was sent into an echo chamber by the current administration and never investigated. And so he was confirmed.
Please don’t stop reading.
It’s not just sexual assault
Look, I have to be careful not to go on too long. But now, and you know this, we women have lost control of the decisions regarding our own bodies. There is a major force (including the authorship of Project 2025) working to roll back contraception options for women to zero. Women are dying. Women are suffering. Women are being tracked. Yes, tracked.
Project 2025 cannot be looked away from. It’s in the heart of this election. 2025 has enormous repercussions for women, and both Trump (though he says whatever the moment asks of him, but over and over he has espoused 2025) and Vance (who does not waver on 2025 and fully supports it) walk in accordance with the plans held in those pages. Those plans include returning to a Christian nation, which does not mean loving your neighbor as yourself but instead having women again where they belong: in the kitchen, out of the workplace, raising children, raising their grandchildren, serving their men.
LOOK IT UP. IT’S IN THERE IN BLACK AND WHITE.
It is real.
Some men just don’t like Kamala
This, too, is in recent headlines. And I wonder, Do they like Trump? I have trouble believing they do. I think this is an excuse that allows a man to vote for Trump rather than a woman, because not liking the personality of a competent woman and instead voting for a man who will (as he has promised) overturn our economy, arrest his enemies, try to support our entire economy via tariffs (something every expert says is bs), end public health care, end social security, deport hundreds of thousands of undocumented AND legal immigrants, take away rights from all marginalized groups, fully support the destruction of Palestine, fully support Russia, fully support Orban, etc etc etc – ok, can you see how ridiculous those headlines really are? They are smokescreens.
All of those choices (including putting women back in the kitchen and nursery) versus not liking the personality of the other candidate? What is really at the heart here?
Some messaging that made me write this
Biden, among many others, has frequently said:
Women, it is up to you!
But here is my question:
Why?
Why is it only up to us?
Yah, we have badass women and regular ass women who are speaking up. But why is it up to only the women?
Men, where are you?
So, now I’m going to ask you to go inside yourself and ask some hard questions.
First, a hard one. Do you secretly hope women lose power? Really take a little time with this.
If so, it’s important to admit. And it is also important that you go and tell the women you know that this is your truth. Because if that’s part of your values, do not cover it up to keep safe. Own it. I dare you.
If it’s not part of your values, well my brothers, it is exactly what is hanging in the balance right now. The mechanisms to make women lose any equality they hold have both occurred and are in process. This is real.
And doing something about it or hiding your head in the sand (aka, believing it's up to women to defend their rights) are the two choices before you right now.
We need you
Of course we need your vote.
But here’s what we really need. Your voice.
Men are still the most powerful voices in the country. White men most of all.
We need you to risk your own comfort for our safety. Not just at the dinner table among like-minded people talking. That’s emperor’s clothing material. We need you to act and speak in real ways right now.
Actions
It’s as simple as bringing it up in every conversation. Putting on your social media feeds that we cannot go back in time and you support women’s rights to be equal citizens. Standing up in your religious institution or club or wherever and speaking out on behalf of women right now.
Right now. Before Tuesday.
Will you?
Please, please do. Our lives depend on it.
***
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One or all, each of these things make a big difference in a writer’s life. Thank you!!
Thank you for this, Amy. It's so true--we really do need men to step up for us, even if we are strong, independent women.
Thank you for such powerful words and images!