You know who you are. You are the men who truly love, honor and respect women. You are the men who have moved out from under the bell jar of male privilege and believe women are as important as you are, and deserve all of the same rights, privileges, opportunities and protections you have been granted that most of you have never been without, even for a day.
There were few to no men like you around back in my day, when we fought our war for the freedom to live as free human beings. We were on our own and we knew it. Many women sacrificed their lives in that battle. Many died. Many lived lives of quiet bondage and socially sanctioned slavery. Many lived lives full of dead dreams and daily struggle to keep ourselves and our children safe and alive, and didn’t even know, until our later years, what freedom even felt like.
Now, thankfully, there are many wide awake men who are stepping up beside us, as this horror of a war on women rises up once again. It feels wonderful to hear you let us know you’re there, that you see, that you too, are outraged, that you want us to stay free. It feels good to feel your strong shoulders beside our own strong shoulders.
But there is no time for us to rest our head on your shoulder in gratitude for your presence. This not a time when hearing your validations of our worth and our rights is enough. We cannot take the time to enjoy this, because the old nightmare is back, in full color and surround sound.
An open war has been re-declared on women; on your wives, mothers, sisters, daughters. Everywhere I look I see women stepping up to the front lines again, banding together to take care of each other, as women do when under siege. You won’t see it in the news. You won’t know of the underground networks of women mobilizing once again, to provide needed safe abortion services. You can’t see the other covert networks of women fighting to protect each other from rape or violence in their home, or on any of the other secret battle fronts. But they are there, these brave women, called back to active duty beside their more visible sisters who are fighting back in the system and those of us seated on fast horses running hard to spread the word that the enemy is BACK. This is the war we thought we’d won and would never have to fight again, against the exact same enemy that once ruled all of our lives, our roles and our bodies.
I will never go back there, and as long as there is a breath left in this body, I will fight those who would recreate that hell of a life for my granddaughters. As well as those willing to allow it to happen.
What we need from amond you now are brother warriors. We don’t need you for emotional support only, we need you on the front lines right beside us, in full body armor, combat ready, weapons oiled and ready.
We need you with us to not just fight the enemy we can all see, we need you to fight those in our own ranks who think this war can be postponed until some cleverly designed political strategy pays off somewhere "down the line."
We need you to stand with us to fight against the arrogant ignorance that fails to see that "down the line" means a path made slippery with women’s blood already in process of being shed: our blood, not theirs. This supremely arrogant, willfully chosen ignorance, is deadly to women who are living under fire right now, TODAY.
It is tragically too late for this kind of political gamesmanship: the war is on NOW. The extreme religious right army has been on the march for more years than some of these brilliant young political strategists have even been alive. "A dollar short and a day late" doesn’t begin to cover how completely futile and pathetic this so called "strategy" is.
These confident brilliant young political strategists with powerful voices and podiums believe they are fighting the good fight for all of us. But the war they are fighting exists only between their ears, in the snapping synapses of their powerful brains.
The war against women is being waged right here, right now, in the space between our legs attached to our blood and bone bodies. While they write books, raise money and play politics, we are being raped, we are facing the specter of having to carry a rapists child to full term and we are bleeding out from unsafe abortions.
In my book, men like this are just as dangerous to women as the religious extremists are, if not more so, because they claim to be with us, (down the line, of course). And dangerous because they have the means to assume control over whose voices are heard, and whose are not.
So you can see, you men who are awake, we need more of your powerful voices to be shouting, not only softly offering comfort. We need more of your strong shoulders in ACTION, wielding arms.
This is where the rubber meets the road, my wakeful brothers. This is where you choose your stance. There are three possible options I see.
The visible enemy has all the powerful weapons money can buy, and they are directly trained on all the women you love, honor and respect. Fully equipped troops are needed on this front line, in mass, and in full view, right beside the women.
The invisible enemy, those among us too blind to see they are aiding the enemy by playing right into their clever political hands, need to be made to see that "down the line" is of little use when war has already been declared and the bodies are piling up as we speak.
And yes, we also need strong, good hearted men with willing shoulders that can be leaned on now and then when battle fatigue sets in. Medics we can count on. Cooks who know how to deliver soul food and needed sustenance.
To the wide awake men already suited up and on the front lines, we salute you and are proud to fight beside you.
To all wide awake men, who want to see women survive this war and emerge intact and victorious, consider this a clarion call for more combat ready troops to join us on the dual front lines.
Because the truth is, if this were all turned around the other way, if the same deadly war was being waged to take away mens civil rights, and basic freedoms and to endanger the lives of our sons, brothers, and husbands, there would be a roaring force of mothers, wives, sisters and daughters in numbers that would make the ground tremble, rushing to fight for you.
