Women’s marches

Women have plenty to get angry about.Take the film industry, for example, which portrays women as expendable pieces of meat, to be subjected to rape, torture and gratuitous murder scenes: from "Game of Thrones" like series, to the latest block busters.In the Guardian, Victoria Coren Mitchell tears into the latest, multi-awarded anti-women film, "Nocturnal Animals":"So, if you haven’t seen it, I’m afraid the rest of this paragraph is going to spoil the excitement of the “will they/won’t they” moment. Will the women be raped? They will! Will they be murdered? They will!"…"So, you know. If you’re the kind of person who is excited by dead, naked women, then the fear scene will be massively improved by my having told you what’s coming. Now you won’t have to rewind after the corpse scene to enjoy it properly – we all know how tricky it can be to time a scroll-back during effective pornography. Pressing the button can really put you off your stride, can’t it? So, have this one on me! Enjoy the dread, the sobbing, the terrified and hopeless maternal embrace: rape is definitely coming, death is definitely coming and you’ll get to see those corpses! With blood smeared carefully on the bums!"And who gets the Baftas, the awards – not the female actors:"So why is it nominated for nine Baftas? Squeamish Tom gets the nod for best director and best screenplay. The male leads are nominated for acting (while the brilliant trio of Amy Adams, Isla Fisher and Laura Linney, who all give wonderful performances, get nothing. Sweet Amy Adams is what they get).It’s up for best music, best editing. And then, lest we fail to appreciate the full visual joy of these fat hags and dead babes, there are nominations for production design, cinematography, hair and makeup. Mwah, darling! Looking fabulous!The reviewers found it beautiful to a man – and I use the term advisedly.“What surface! What sheen!” raved Mark Kermode in this paper, praising the film’s “strangely seductive power”.“Intoxicating, provocative, delicious,” purred Robbie Collin in the Telegraph.Peter Bradshaw, in the Guardian, salivated over a more specific “kind of toxic deliciousness”.A double-rape movie! Yum bloody yum."Victoria has cause to be angry.https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/22/nocturnal-animal-film-rape-murder-repulsive

What next after the women’s marches?Marches mean nothing unless practical gains in understanding, organisation and action spring from them.Part of the understanding is to link women’s issues to the wider issues of the 95%, to realise the class nature of society.  This essential point seems difficult for many to grasp – even to want to start trying to understand.  For example, there is a lot of talk among some groups about the evil influence of “banks” – as if banks can be seen in isolation to their role within capitalism.What difference did “Occupy Wall Street” and the “Arab Spring” make?  Loads of young people were out on the streets for both, and at least on the surface of things, they came to nothing.Many spirited Arab women joined in the spring demonstrations, only to face sexual attacks from their male “comrades-in-arms” – so big gaps in understanding from some members of these crowds.Looking further back, to the “flower power”, anti-war awakenings of the sixties – those ideas soon faded and were replaced by generations of money making yuppies.Are we doomed to forever experience these “awakenings”, only for the camaraderie and global movements to fizzle out, leaving no trace on our political lives?

Writing in the Guardian yesterday, Paul Mason has hopes of this movement being kept alive:"But events such as this alter people’s lives. They thrust big and complicated political questions into lives of routinely depoliticised people.""Saturday was, above all else, the sound of the progressive middle classes rejecting what’s good for the employers and embracing what’s good for the people.""Winnie Wong, a key figure in organising the march told me: “The beauty of the Women’s March as a fledgling movement, which is now both decentralised and already global in scale, is that it will be very hard for any one institution to co-opt the messaging. This creates headaches for the bad actors in the influential spheres of the Democratic party who have helped to build the neoliberal institutions which are culpable for driving the slow erosion of our democracy.”"https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/23/millions-have-done-something-together-why-the-womens-march-will-spark-the-resistance

I blame Mike Pence and the 'pro-life' position being in fact all about being 'anti-women' and stopping women controlling their lives.

I agree. Enough women have the vote to enable themselves, if they so wished, to change the world so that they can have a full say in what happens to them.

that's not what "my beloved" would say. According to her all of her problems are caused by a single individual, me!