Mormons, cowboys, the wild west of women's rights
Mormons, cowboys, the wild west of women's rights
What a lot of men are missing about our current moment, Arizona, Cowboy Carter, and more in the feminist reads roundup
I have had this feeling lately that men in mainstream media coverage, even left-leaning men, sometimes seem to be misreading our current moment. There is a lot of chatter about the economy, dropping fertility rates, and the election—and how those play into each other.
But lately it feels like they are having a different conversation than the ones in my personal life, and ones playing out among women that I read and admire.
Specifically, some men in mainstream media seem to miss that women are freaking the eff out, and for good reason, because our bodies and rights are under attack and that changes…everything!
Do you have this feeling?
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For example, recently a popular NYT host had demographer Jennifer D. Sciubba on his podcast to talk about what’s driving the fertility drop in the U.S. and elsewhere. I am forever fascinated about this and have written about it before here and here, so I was very down for the conversation.
There’s a point in the dialogue where he notes that fertility rates dropped significantly in 2017 and have never recovered, and this baffles him.
It just doesn’t make sense, he says, why 2017? “What has really changed so much since 2017?” he asks dismissively, as if to say, “not that much!”
I gasped a little and almost dropped the dish that I was washing.
What has happened since 2017?
Well, for starters:
-Trump got elected.
-#MeToo.
-Roe vs. Wade was overturned.
-A global pandemic that screwed over mothers and women and forced them out of the workforce in droves, while driving the mothers’ mental health crisis to a fever pitch.
-George Floyd and BLM.
-An insurrection at the U.S. Capitol led by white supremacist men.
-School shootings reached an all-time high.
-The rate of women DYING in pregnancy or postpartum almost DOUBLED.
And that’s just the beginning—there’s inflation, soaring housing costs, attacks on gay and trans rights, climate change, and on and on...every woman could probably come up with her own list of things that have massively impacted her in the last seven years and created instability and precarity.
It seems like one of the obvious answers to the fertility drop question is that women are the gatekeepers to fertility, and when conditions don’t seem great for raising happy, healthy kids with a good future—while also maintaining a life as a happy, healthy adult with a good future, women pull back as a natural common-sense reaction.
Precarity breeds caution, for good reason.
And this is partly why I love newsletters, because while I don’t see this story and other stories that matter to women reflected in the mainstream media, I often see them treated seriously and thoughtfully by women and nonbinary writers and thinkers, especially independent ones.
Right now we are seeing women’s rights and LGBTQ+ rights attacked in a way that threatens our very bodies, and our children’s bodies. Sometimes it feels like this is left out of mainstream discussions of politics and trends, and that feels dehumanizing.
Alarms are going off for women; but they should be going off for everyone.
Case in point: We got bananas news out of Arizona this week, where the Arizona Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that a 160-year-old near-total abortion ban still on the books in the state is enforceable.
Monica Hesse from the Washington Post has done a great explainer on the old lech with a criminal past who introduced this law—a guy who was “married” to a 12-year old and impregnated a 14-year old. Why is this not surprising??
So Arizona is literally reverting to the morals of a Warren Jeffs child predator in re-instating this law.
This old lech law dates from 160 years ago before women had the right to vote, and raises questions about what other outdated, anti-women laws are enforceable. For example:
Up until 1900, in many states women couldn’t keep their own wages or own property in their own name.
Women couldn’t legally get a credit card on their own until 1974—which is not that long before I was born!
Women’s right in the U.S. are relatively new—how many other laws for women's rights can be taken back? As much as the attack on women’s rights is devastating, it is reassuring to me to see people I respect taking it seriously, and serving up resistance and solutions.
In that spirit, here are some of the really great things that have resonated with me and brought me joy lately from some of my favorite writers, artists, and feminists. Resistance is alive, and sometimes it looks fabulous in western wear.
What I’ve loved lately
If you do nothing else this week, listen to the “YA YA” track from the new Beyoncé album Cowboy Carter. Then watch Alvin Ailey jam out to it on this video.
We have been having impromptu kitchen dance parties to this song all week.
I have been getting life from Cowboy Carter and discussions with my uni students about how it resists and upturns assumptions about the roots of country music and who “belongs” in that space. It’s subversive and brave and fantastic.
Since I’m from Utah and my mother is from homesteader and ranching families in Montana and Wyoming, and my partner and daughter are Black, this resonated pretty deeply with me and has me thinking about my own heritage.
Tressie Cottom’s review of the Cowboy Carter album breaks it down as only she can, and she’s on point as always.
It was validating to see
losing her mind over the AZ decision, and then coming back with explainers on who is behind this (the same group that worked to overturn Roe, surprise!) and the ways that we can stop them., always and forever, offering daily resistance and connecting the dots to the big picture and Presidential election.
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