Questioning "Nasty" Feminism

My heart warmed to the beautiful actor Ashely Judd’s passionately spoken truth to many thousands of women (and men) at the Women’s March in Washington.  She was great on the topic of disparity of wages between men and women.  And she plowed right into other topics with gusto like how Viagra is not taxed in the US while the products that women and girls must have when menstruating are taxed. Reproductive women and girls, if not pregnant, must have these hygiene products every month. We are not talking pocket change. It adds up.  But when Judd starting adding up the names of the brave, courageous women (nasty women*, as she calls them, and counting herself among them) her message starts separating out the “women of the deplorables” (working class ignorant Trump supporters) from the “nasty women” (university educated, sophisticated). We got it.  So did the crowds. Deplorables bad (they support Trump), nasty women good (they support Hillary Clinton).

 

How did Judd do this?  First, just by using these courageous (read: nasty) women’s first names “. Rosa?  Judd must mean Rosa Parks. Eleanor?  Oh, of course.  That must be Eleanor Roosevelt. Anybody from the south would know about these two women, both who are heroes of mine. But then Judd called out the name Gloria on her list.  Gloria? Gloria Steinem?  The renowned feminist who recently said while campaigning for Hillary that the only reason young women flocked to Bernie Sander’s camp during the election was because “that’s where the boys are?” Ah, my enthusiasm for Judd’s speech started waning.  Especially when at last, Judd called out the name “Hillary”.

Hillary Clinton, in my opinion, is a steely eyed war monger in a soft woman’s body with a man’s brain for compartmentalization. She knows how to say the sweet words of equality and compassion that women long to hear.  And yet Hillary was high in the circle of power resulting in the assassinations, murders, invasions, destructions and dislocations of entire populations and territories of other countries, which have been among the worst in all of history. And Hillary Clinton cheered them all on and orchestrated much of the criminal mayhem.  She’s has helped assignations and military coups elsewhere; why not at home?  I would trust her feminism as far I would trust a pit of rattlesnakes.

*Trump called Clinton “a nasty woman” during the last televised debate.