Women everywhere continue to organize, level up, and disrupt the patriarchy. On the personal level, here at FDS we can attest that our lives have changed for the better when we [often painfully] shed the lies fed to us for men's benefit. More women are realizing that they do not need a man, and do not need to be a mother. In my country, we've elected a Black/Asian woman to Vice President. On a global scale, the #MeToo movement not only continues, but has branched off in every direction. We are making progress, we're laying the groundwork for the future granddaughters of earth, just like our grandmothers did. Progress.

So why do we simultaneously experience backlash via the rise of progressively antagonistic misogyny?

The Sarah Everard case is a glaring example of this. The sudden response of #NotAllMen, the police violence at Sarah's vigil - violence that was justified as a COVID precaution, although tightly-packed crowds of UK football fans just days before were not a police concern.

We must face the reality that our progress is a threat to a system that upholds men. And when we make clear strides, when we expose our truths, we're going to see backlash. It is the function of the patriarchy to police what threatens it, on the personal scale (a husband or male friend pulling the ol' nOt aLL mEn) as well as on a larger scale (police brutality and anti-woman legislation). We can come up with a million examples of this.

This is absolutely intertwined with the fight for decolonization, dismantling white supremacy, fighting capitalism, and fighting for the planet. All of the perpetrators in these crimes share a commonality: dominator culture. But that's a different conversation.

At the end of the day and at the beginning of the day, we will keep fighting!

“Progress and resentment are perfectly compatible. Indeed, women may be resented precisely because they are achieving rapid social progress in some areas. Some women’s success in hitherto male-dominated roles, as well as their abandonment of traditionally feminine forms of care work, would be predicted on my analysis to provoke misogynist hostility. Misogyny often stems from the desire to take women down, to put them in their place again. So the higher they climb, the farther they may be made to fall because of it. The glass ceiling may be broken; but then there may be smackdown. And some women get hit by the shards of glass that rain down from others’ rising.”

Excerpt From: Manne, Kate;. “Down Girl.”