WOMEN RISING
“Women’s Anger Can Change the World.” A quote from Joan of Arc as she led her army in France, taken from the book by poet Nikita Gill, Fierce Fairytales. Hachette Books, 2018
ASHAMED by SUSAN GLENN LAMPE
Final February 2024 hours find me watching
the women of my country defend themselves
against injustice perpetrated upon them
by the men of the same country.
Some are attacked in televised hearings
reminiscent of an ancient witchcraft ritual,
alleged crimes brought about by
hidden romance or a failed miscarriage besmirched and laid bare.
Others fight over their attempts to bear a child
in a world that has robbed them of healthcare,
causing childbirth to become a mother-child-killer.
Some, fear being shunned, claim they never used invitro methods to conceive the child
that now lives with them.
Legalese and legislative waves flow through laws and rules and bans enacted by men against abortion.
Women are forced into shame and deadly sepsis when pregnancy goes awry as clinics close.
An Ohio woman turned away by a hospital eventually miscarries, into a toilet, clogs it, and she is jailed.
Weeks later police release her after publicity shines a light on the fact “there is no law that applies.”
The laws are drawn to assert the power of men over women
To control women’s bodies without knowledge of how those bodies work.
They called it “Freedom of Choice.” Their choice, not the woman’s.
One new system uses an attack to shine a light on a woman, often a powerful professor, a lawyer, or politician.
Media attacks follow to bear down and squeeze her hard until she resigns or screams in confusion and anger.
The method is new but shutting down a woman’s voice is long proven as effective.
Some women themselves use it against others of their own gender to seize power or notoriety.
Late winter months I watched women caught, thrust back and forth
To and fro between the men’s ideologies where they do not fit
Where they never have and never will fit but must adjust to survive
Once destroyed, cast out of jobs, they wither barren, their lives in ashes, beaten voiceless, shamed.
Sunday afternoon in March 2024.
I write from our home in Union, Washington, surrounded by acres of budding rhododendrons waking from the Northwest winter that begins in October and can drift to mid-July. Across the waters of Hood Canal, the majestic Olympic Mountains bear deep snow, more than I recall seeing in the ten years we have owned our house here. Beyond the windows a bountiful clutch of daffodils wave multi-colored yellow heads alongside magenta and pink hellebores. Blue-sky days burst through the endless gray of clouds and I feel caught between seasons.
I want to welcome and rejoice with Spring, but the current political situation ensnares me and loosens many memories of my first marriage, fraught with domestic abuse and alcoholism. I thought this time lay buried, left behind thirty years until current events dredged it out.
In February, I followed the sexual assault trial brought by E. Jean Carroll, journalist, writer and columnist for ELLE magazine, against former President Trump. She won the jury trial and a following suit caused by his continuing defamation of her. He is charged to pay her 83.3 million dollars. I bought and read her memoir What Do Women Need Men For: A Modest Proposal, St. Martin’s Press, 2019. The book explodes with experiences that show her daring escapades, her humor and her courage. She was reared in Indiana, next to my own home state of Illinois. She attended college there, became a frequent beauty queen in many events, eventually found her way to New York City where she was a long-time columnist with ELLE magazine. In the book Carroll and her large dog Lewis Carroll are making a trip through the Midwestern states, stopping in towns with women’s names to ask the question that is the book title.
In 2023 I watched women rise to speak truth to power, specifically against former President Donald J. Trump. Cassidy Hutchinson courageously appeared before the sixth public hearing of the U.S. Congressional House Select Committee on the investigation of January 6th attack on the Capitol. Hutchinson was former assistant to Mark Meadows, White House Chief of Staff during the Trump Presidency. She was in the Oval Office area on January 6th and has written a book, Enough, published by Simon & Schuster, released September 2023.
Sara Matthews, former White House Deputy Secretary for the Donald Trump administration resigned after January 6, 2021 and has been an outspoken critic of his 2024 campaign.
In February, I also kept tabs on a long-running suit brought and won by New York Attorney General Letitia James over the Trump family efforts to defraud the state of New York. Trump is charged to repay the state $454 million. James, a Democrat, is the first African American and first woman elected to the post of Attorney General in New York.
My enchantment with women telling truth to power began in 1991. I watched Anita Hill, a professor, testify at the hearings held for Clarence Thomas to become a Supreme Court Justice. Hill formerly worked for Thomas and related how he sexually harassed her on the job. This was poorly received by the men on the Senate Justice Committee led by then Senator Joseph Biden. Her courage to come forward resulted in the loss of her job as a law professor at an Oklahoma University. Harassment by powerful men in Oklahoma eventually sent Hill packing out of her home state. For years she has been a law professor at Brandeis University in Massachusetts and she speaks often about her experience. Professor Hill has written three books but every few years I reread the first one Speaking Truth to Power, Anchor Books, Random House, 1998.
This year I reread another book, Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas, Plume, Penguin House, 1994. This one relates Thomas and Hill story through the eyes and research of investigative journalists Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson.
In 1991, I’d just married my present husband Rich in 1988, and moved to be with him in Rochester, New York. I’d met him in Al-Anon as I spent six years trying to claw my way out of a twenty-year marriage fraught with domestic violence and alcoholism. I still find it difficult to speak about any of these experiences, even though my first husband and parents are all deceased. My parents did not believe, did not want to discuss or hear about my stories of abuse, of being hit, raped and nearly strangled. The stories of women today have pushed me there again. To add to my distress, I am a journalism graduate with twenty years of work in that field and the ease of how lies flow and disinformation is spread appalls me. In 1991, I began a collection of articles kept in a box I labeled “Who’s Safe: Violence Against Women.” I recently pulled these out.
I feel proud of the women coming forward. Unfortunately, some of them also endure attacks by other powerful women. One is Elise Stefanik, U.S. representative for New York’s 21st Congressional District and Chief of the House Republican Conference, a post formerly held by Liz Cheney (see below). Stefanik, a Harvard graduate, was disparaged by that institution for her participation in the event of January 6th at the Capitol. She called three college presidents to a Republican-led House Committee on Education of the Workforce to respond to questions that universities were failing to protect Jewish students amid fears of worldwide antisemitism, fallout from Israel’s War on Gaza. The questions were unclear; the presidents answered with a legalese understanding. The answers resulted in the dismissal of two of them, Dr, Claudine Gay, first Black woman president at Harvard University, and Liz Magill, president of the University of Pennsylvania. Both were let go but a third, MIT president Sally Kornbluth, kept her position. The assault was later found to be well-planned and carried out with intention.
Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was relentlessly attacked for years but bided her time until she was selected as Speaker of the House. She turned out to be one of the best if not the best Speaker of all time. She led in seeking the impeachment of former President Trump and also in selecting representatives to serve on the U.S. House Select Committee to investigate the events of Jan. 6th. Former Representative Liz Cheney (R-WYO) led that committee alongside Bennie G. Thompson, U.S. Representative to Congress, (D-MS). Cheney’s book about her experiences is titled Oath and Honor, A Memoir and a Warning, Little Brown and Company, 2023. Cheney lost her elected office and was condemned by the Republican Party for her part in reporting the truth about the Jan 6th attack on the Capitol.
Representatives Cori Bush (D-MO) and Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) have also been under persistent attack for speaking out.
One story that tugs my heart are the attacks on Georgia District Attorney Fani (Fawni) Willis who had the audacity to take on 2020 election interference in her state. The case has been going on in Georgia for at least a year to include a grand jury. A resulting racketeering charge ensnared a large number of Republicans of both sexes. Some have already faced sentencing. A recent suit against Willis was filed by lawyers for former president Trump and others indicted. Information was leaked about a relationship between DA Willis and Nathan Wade, leader of the team for election racketeering. The informant was also a lawyer in the divorce of Wade and his ex-wife. Trump lawyers asserted that DA Willis hired Wade to lead the case and then Wade used money he received for his work to take Willis on lavish trips with taxpayer dollars. None of this was proven in hearings, but the two admitted they had a brief affair, something that is not against the law and something they took great care to keep quiet. Trump lawyers who could not prove any of the other accusations used this effectively to smear Willis and Wade. The presiding Judge McAfee labeled their affair impropriety, although it would have remained unnoticed without the smearing at the hearing. Despite lack of evidence, McAfee encouraged Trump lawyers to further pursue the case. No one considered the life that DA Fanni Willis has been forced to lead despite her father’s testimony that she has never been able to live in her own house due to harassment, a new home she purchased after becoming District Attorney. She moves frequently to stay ahead of those who harass her. Her father lives part time in her home in Atlanta and told of the continual assault by strangers with spray paint. He frequently found people peering in windows. Wade and Willis have been friends many years. When Wade had cancer recently, Wade attempted to help him. Willis startled everyone when she appeared unexpectedly to testify and defend herself at the hearing. She is accompanied everywhere by two security guards for safety. Although the prosecutors failed to prove their accusations with evidence, the judge forced Willis to choose between stepping down and taking her entire case with her where it would probably never come to trial or to ask Nathan Wade to resign, which he did.
Chillingly, the prosecutors succeeded in unfairly smearing two people’s reputations with hearsay and no viable evidence. Most came from the former partner in Wade’s law firm who was asked to resign due to sexual assault of an employee.
After watching this hearing blow up into a week-long circus, I felt sick as if I had witnessed an old-fashioned Southern lynching. The racial bias was hard to discount when members of the prosecution sat across the aisle—on one side were white men led in the assault by one of their wives. On the other side, most were African American to include Willis and Wade.
Women are also often in the news who suffer from an inability to get healthcare, especially during a miscarriage. Too many have faced horrific situations when they failed to be given help. Texas has become exceptionally good at condemning women who try to have an abortion for any reason. They have been barred from emergency care, many forced to travel to another state for help or bear the child until they nearly die from sepsis. One woman in Ohio was hunted down and jailed when she miscarried into a toilet due to an inability to get care. The hospital alerted police who came after the toilet with the fetus, then put the woman in jail. She was released days later. No one could identify the crime.
As I write this BLOG, I read that Christine Blasey Ford has published a memoir, One Way Back: A Memoir, St. Martin’s Press. The book relates her memory of an attempt at sexual assault by now Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, when they were teenagers and attended a party. She was 13; he was 15 and she says his friend watched. Ford came forward during Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings in 2018. He denies this incident ever happened, which also brings forth the possibility of perjury. Ford is a research psychologist professor in California and a devoted surfer, which she explains in the book.
I continue to gather these incidents as I hear about them. I wrote this BLOG as a chapter for my book, “Who’s Safe: Women and Violence.”
P.S. I would also alert readers to a three-book series by Philippa Gregory, a famous British historical writer. The series begins with the book Tidelands.
Spring comes to the Olympic Mountains