Women's March

If you are a man and you're scratching your head struggling to understand why all these women were marching yesterday, well let me help.

Let's transport into an alternative universe, one where a woman has been elected president, a woman vice-president and there is a virtually all-female congress.

That new president and congress have publicly stated that men shouldn't have the right to decide what happens in their bodies related to reproduction, that they...the women running the federal government...know best.  In fact, some of these women have also publicly stated that, even in cases where a man was raped or assaulted by a family member, that they still should be the ones who decide what healthcare options would be available to men.

They've also threatened to cut off funding to a national organization that provides significant healthcare services to economically poor men...all because these women running the federal government have a religious objection* to 3%** of the services that the organization in question provides.  Oh, in many of the locations where this organization exists, there simply are no alternative providers of these services, especially in rural areas of the country (example).

These new women leaders are also hostile to marriage equality.  In fact, the new vice-president once said that being gay was a choice and that "societal collapse was always brought about following an advent of the deterioration of marriage and family" (source:  Businesinsider.com).  The new president has committed to appointing justices to the United States Supreme Court who will overturn marriage equality (source:  HRC), apparently because state governments (in our alternative universe also filled with mostly women) should be able to decide whether two consenting adults who love each other should be allowed to marry.  Why?  Because they believe that government...run by women...knows what's best, especially for men.

Frightening, isn't it?  If you're a man...living in our real universe...what I'm suggesting is that you engage in some basic empathy.  Many women are genuinely fearful, and in my opinion, rightfully so (hence this posting).

In the end, I have no doubt that my wife and I will be okay during the Trump years.  Heck, we may even get a tax cut.  But I worry about my daughters living in a world where a federal or state government can reach into their bodies to make reproductive choices for them or decide whether or not they can marry the person they love.  I simply don't want any government to have that much power.

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(*) Count me firmly in the court of fully respecting the religious choices of every American.  But I also ask that other Americans not insist on making their religious choices policy for everyone else.   Put another way, if your religion teaches you that abortion is murder and that homosexuality is a sin, well, then you better not be gay and you sure as heck better not have an abortion...but you shouldn't have the power to make those choices for those who have sincerely held but different convictions.

(**) http://www.factcheck.org/2011/04/planned-parenthood/