By Jurassic Tart
Posted on Sunday, January 22, 2017
Dear Daughters,
I have avoided writing you this letter for a couple of months, despite the fact that I have been warned that I should. People who have lived in totalitarian countries where the threat of violence is much more real have urged the writing of such letters, so that we do not forget. I do not like writing, so I put it off. I also do not really take seriously the idea of being disappeared in the middle of the night, so I have put it off. But the time has come. An unpredictable, dangerous man will be President of the United States at noon tomorrow, and I have no idea what the future has in store. I have put my names on multiple petitions and open letters, so should we see squads who disappear people, I will almost certainly be among the disappeared.
Let me start by telling you who I am. Above all, I am a fierce feminist. I am a woman in science. I have fought a lot of battles for women. Admittedly, I was once part of the problem. I was raised in a very conservative, patriarchical society, and it took years for me to accept women and men as true equals. It took years for me to believe that women could govern their own bodies, that harassment was wrong in all its forms, and women could be both victims and perpetrators. The great lie, the lie that the patriarchy is founded upon, is that women are not equal and we need chivalrous defenders. This lie hurts men and women both, though I won’t presume to be an expert and detail it all here. The evidence is too great anyways. But, in short, we need protection because we are weaker than men, we are unable to protect ourselves, and we deserve protection because we are pious protectors of society’s morals. This sells short the strength of women. We are also capable of hurting and harassing others because women are capable of evil. We must reject the myth that we are angels. We are human. For full rights, we need to be seen as human.
Hillary Clinton was also a fierce feminist. Books will be written on her, so I won’t do that here. I was so looking forward to telling you all about our first female president. A female president was something I had been actively discussing with my friends since high school. I have had multiple friends who were ready to commit to a life of service so one day they could have the job. Perhaps one of them will. But we always knew how tough it would be. Even at 16, we talked about how people will perceive our periods, and one of my friends said she was planning on getting a hysterectomy just so people couldn’t blame any of her presidential decision making on her period. At 16, we knew what was up. We knew how this world saw women, even if we didn’t fully understand where these ideas came from, how widespread they were, or how to fight them. I hoped for Hillary specifically since 2007. I had dreams of working in her administration. When she lost the primary to Obama, I was certain she would win in 2016. I was so certain. And when she didn’t? I fell into a depression I’ve never really recovered from. My entire journey as a women, my life as a feminist, what the hell is it all for? I thought we were due for a win. We weren’t. Instead, I got schooled, like so many disenfranchised people have been schooled for millennia, and it fucking hurts. My heart has been ripped out and stomped on, and in truth, it feels like 9/11 all over again. The loss is immense. It’s a loss of self and country and future and safety. It’s everything. The future is dark now, and I do not understand it.
Now, a dangerous man is president. I don’t know how dangerous. I hope he is just a silly idiot who will only shoot himself in the foot. I fear this is not the case. In 2015, I went to Crete for a conference. There were big, dramatic signs hanging on the sides of cliffs over the ocean saying “Refugees Welcome Here” in Greek. It did not matter much. Crete is on the other side of Greece—away from the refugees—away from where it costs very much to say such things. I saw such a broken a country….but also not very broken. Not Syria broken. We all sat around the conference dinner table in September 2015, and we Americans assured our foreign astronomy counterparts that Trump was a fluke. He would never win. In August 2016, we were all together at another conference, and we were reminded. A UK compatriot pointed at us, he said, “you and you and you and you, you all promised me he was joke, he would never amount to anything.” We said, “really? We said such things? Oh but that was a long time ago. I don’t remember. And anyways, he will not win.”
I have spent countless hours wondering how dangerous this new President is. Shall we walk through the possibilities together? Let’s.
- Nuclear war. A distinct possibility given his kindergarten penchant for ranting against superpowers on fucking Twitter. If this is the case, then I hate to tell you that we live in the fall-out range of one of the premier targets of the US, so we will all be getting cancer, if we survive the blast. I’m sorry that we don’t have the resources to immediately move you to Canada, where it is presumably safer from nuclear winter. But parents throughout history, including present day, do not often have the resources to save their children from horrible, preventable, fates. C’est la vie.
- Muslim registry. I can almost guarantee this is going to happen. Xenophobia in this country is high. We have been hostile to the Muslims since 9/11, probably before that, but I was a child then and don’t really know. Trump has already talked about this. All that has to happen for it to be a reality is another terrorist attack in the US. That will sway public opinion, increase fear, Trump and republicans will do more fear-mongering, and we will have a registry. Now, the question is, what does that mean? Are we talking deportations? Internment camps? Death camps? I do not know. But we have a lot of innocent Muslims in this country, and very soon, they may need our help. See, any kind of unconstitutional law or executive order takes time to be challenged. And the next member of the Supreme Court will be very conservative, so there is no guarantee it will be overturned. But regardless, a lot of damage can be done in between the time an order is handed down and the time the Supreme Court writes its decision.
- Mass deportation of immigrants. Again, this is almost certainly going to happen. See above.
- Loss of women’s rights. So many things fall under this category. You will probably lose them all. Almost certainly, we will lose the fight for abortion rights. Abortion rights have been rolled back severely in the past couple of decades. With a conservative judge on the Supreme Court, Roe v. Wade will be overturned. This country hates women. Oh, right, no, people will tell you that we don’t hate women. We love them. We must chivalrously protect them. Meaning that women are not humans who can make their own decisions. Birth control affordability will disappear. Any progress on investigating college sexual assaults will disappear, since our President is the Assaulter in Chief. Paid maternity leave? There’s an outside chance, since the daughter of the Assaulter in Chief, whom he has described lecherous thoughts towards, supports this. But is paid maternity leave a gain? I would argue not, since it still presumes that women are responsible for the majority of the childcare. We need parental leave, like most first world countries have. But our President is a man’s man, so forget it.
There are many many more horrible possibilities. These are the ones that keep me up at night. These are the ones that make me wish I had the resources to flee the country with you.
I do not know what will become of women in Donald Trump’s world. I doubt it will be good. Read The Handmaid’s Tale. Study it. This could literally be your future. Never forget this. You think it won’t be. Everyone thinks it won’t be. But how many Senators are women? How many Congresswomen? How many CEOs of banks? Here’s how The Handmaid’s Tale started—a fascist regime decided it wanted a return to traditional values so the strong male majority in the senate passed a bill that women’s bank accounts would be frozen and therefore, they had no money to leave the country. You think this couldn’t happen? You are wrong. The worst can always happen. We were complacent in 2015 and 2016. If you ever think a thing can’t happen, ask yourself, how many men are in power? Maybe 8% of those are true feminists. How many women are in power? Maybe 30% (possibly higher) have internalized misogyny. Do the math. Can it happen? Yes, it can. You are in danger, always.
I have thought a lot about this moment, this moment where I would have to make a choice about who I was. I have always imagined myself a revolutionary, before I actually considered the need might ever really arise. But here it is. How dangerous is a Trump Presidency to me? Well, this is a man who has asked for the names of government employees who are climate change sympathizers. Anytime a government asks for names of people who have participated in innocuous activities, it’s not good. In fact, it is a huge red flag. At best, we can expect a political blacklist. In which case, my name will likely be on it, and we will struggle for money if I can’t find a job outside the US. At worst, such lists lead to thoughts of kidnappings in the middle of the night.
If it turns out Muslims have to go to internment camps, or face mass deportations back to a hostile homeland, a very real possibility, and our friends ask for our help, then we will help. This could be very dangerous to us. I have thought a lot about how dangerous this could be. At times, I want to say that we will always choose our own safety first, I will keep you safe no matter what, and I will keep me safe. But I cannot promise you this. I know, as your mother, you expect me to promise you this. I want to, but I can’t. You see, as humans, we have this incredibly capacity to put our ideals about all else. And, would I be comfortable, knowing my family was fine, but the family next door was being hauled off to the proverbial gas chamber? Honestly, sometimes, the answer is yes. Do not ever be afraid to say that. That’s human nature. To fight human nature, we must recognize it first. And I feel human nature deeply, because I have you. But, more than my desire to live with you forever in a land of safety, is my desire to always fight for my neighbor. We are the kind of people who help people. We are the kind of people who die for people. I want you to be that person too.
And so, my children, on the eve of the inauguration of someone who make go down as one of the great despots in history, you may ask where your father and I were. We were at home, packing our bags, readying to go protest. We have already begun volunteering with refugees here and becoming local activists for political causes we believed in. Now, we are heading to D.C. to join the national cause. When the world went to hell, your father and I were on the front lines, fighting for rights and freedoms for all peoples. If you are reading this letter alone, rather than me reading it to you as I want to one day, then I hope you too are also on the front lines. Follow in our footsteps. Fight.
Love,
Your mother
About the Author:
I am a scientist and mother of twin girls. I enjoy murder mysteries and feminism. My best friends currently reside on the Internet.
