Women on the March

As near as I can tell, the Women’s March was primarily organized and attended by women (and Pajama Boy inclined men) that favor Big Government.  And most astonishingly one of the organizers of the Washington D.C. event was a Muslim woman named  Linda Sarsour, who has ties to Hamas and is also bellyaching about the number of states that have passed or are in the process of passing laws forbidding Sharia law.  A fairly large number of women were wearing hijabs in “solidarity” with Muslim women. 

I’ve often commented that the Left preternaturally cannot experience cognitive dissonance.  To expect most leftists to do so is to expect a colorblind person to see red.  You can be angry and frustrated because they cannot, but it will do you no good, because they can’t.

But this weekend’s march really does top it all.  Yes, there were several instances of ridiculousness—Madonna, the original material girls railing against capitalism and with her trashy potty mouth railing on Trump, mostly because he has a potty mouth.  But we expect that from the Entertainment Elite, just as we  have come to accept Al Gore and Leonardo DeCaprio living in their giant mansions and  jetting around in their private jets complaining about everyone else’s carbon footprint, and the economic elite in Davos sipping fine wine and eating canapes and staying in the plushest hotels fretting about income inequality. 

But the incongruity of the weekend went beyond the pale.

As I have written before, I believe that words and symbols matter and matter greatly.  Last year, after the sick sociopath, Dylan Roof, killed those churchgoers in South Carolina, the country went into a veritable frenzy over the Confederate flag, demonizing it as a symbol of racial oppression. Nikki Haley made a big deal of taking it down from the state capital.  You couldn’t even buy a Civil War board game with a Confederate flag on the cover of the box.  I understand all that.  As someone of Lithuanian decent, I have the same visceral reaction to the hammer and sickle.

The hijab is in the same league.  It is a symbol of male oppression and subjugation of women.  France has banned it.  Ataturk banned it in Turkey.   It is dehumanizing, humiliating, confining and disempowering.

Yet it was prominent in many of the photos from the Women’s March.  In fact, Muslim women were teaching American women how to wear it.  And many proudly wore hijabs with stars and stripes.

How can this be?  How can an event devoted to the promotion of women’s rights and independence countenance and celebrate the hijab, the ultimate symbol of women’s oppression? I find this completely incongruous and demands an explanation.

The celebration of the hijab at this event takes on an even more bizarre twist when you consider the controversy surrounding U.S. Chess champion Nazi Paikidze.  Most of you have probably never heard of her.  Ms. Paikidze is a beautiful young chess prodigy and has been working with a professional coach since age 6.   To achieve her level of excellence, we know that she has not had a normal life.  She has undoubtedly sacrificed and worked tirelessly to be able to compete at this level.   

FIDE (the international chess association) in its infinite wisdom decided that the women’s world championships should be held in Tehran this year.  But Iran requires women to wear a hijab at all times.  Ms. Paikidze has taken a stand and has said that if she is forced to wear a hijab, she will boycott the tournament as she sees the hijab as a symbol of oppression.  Putting aside the boneheaded decision of FIDE to permit Tehran to host the tournament, we have heard almost nothing in the press about this.  None of the women at any of the women’s marches advocated for her or took her up as a representative of women’s oppression.  I doubt if any but a small fraction of the marchers has heard of this brave woman.  Consider for a moment the awesome personal sacrifice she is undertaking to make this statement.  She is an extremely talented and accomplished young woman.  She is giving up the fruits of years of exacting labor to fight oppression.  None, I repeat none, of the women this weekend can claim to sacrifice anything close to this to battle oppression.  Instead, the hijab pathologically became part of the women’s march this weekend.

It simply makes no sense for the hijab to be part of an event advocating women’s rights.  The hijab symbolizes just the opposite.  Ms. Paikidze understands that and is willing to make a huge personal sacrifice to drive that point home.  Donning the hijab at a women’s march  is precisely the opposite of what was symbolically done in the 60’s at these kinds of rallies--- bra burning.

So something else must be going on here.

Here is one counter-intuitive explanation.   A large number of the women that marched this weekend don’t want to advance women’s rights or freedoms at all.  Either consciously or subconsciously they want to put themselves in a position of being dependent.  

The other cause that they hew to consistently is Big Government.  Big Government doesn’t expand freedoms.  It takes them away.  It restricts them.  And it makes you dependent on it.  That the women at this march are simultaneously embracing Big Government and embracing the hijab says something about them.  These women would shriek at me and deny it, but I believe that a number of them, perhaps most that participated in the march, are not inclined to embrace their own empowerment at all but secretly have an affinity for dependence. 

It’s easier. You don’t have to make choices.  And making decisions is hard and uncertain.  

You see, the women that are achievers, the truly independent women, the women that value their freedom, abilities and self-respect reject dependence (including the dependence of Big Government) and symbols of oppression….like Ms. Paikidze.  They don’t embrace them.

Because independence and accountability ARE scary things.  You might not make it.  It’s hard.  You fail and fail often.  It’s exhausting.  Ayn Rand was always puzzled by her sister and held her in contempt because her sister liked Communism.  It turned out that her sister LIKED standing in line all day talking to her friends and waiting for her allotment of bread.  It was, to her, a fine way to spend one’s day. 

I called a woman last night that I admire greatly.  She is a business owner of a small business and has been through all the ups and downs of business ownership and has worked long and hard to make her business prosper and to provide a living for the families of her employees.  She has never married and has no man to fall back on—a quintessential independent woman.  I asked her if she had attended the women’s march.

Her flat answer, “NO!! I work.  I have a job.  I have no time for that.”

The achieving women are not out marching.  They are out doing.

When the women marchers and N.O.W. organize something to support Paikidze, I’ll be there.