The fairer sex gets ugly

A good time was had by all at the fourth annual Women’s March in Philadelphia on Jan. 18.

Rip Van Winkle slept through the American Revolution and was much surprised upon awakening. If his nap had been during our century’s revolution, he’d have been more than a little befuddled at what women march for these days.

One sign said, “Sex work is real work.” Unless I’m daft, that is a positive-of-center remark on the validity of prostitution as a career choice. Old Rip might have wondered (if he were familiar only with the 1960s feminism that called prostitution exploitation) that the fairer sex is celebratory rather than appalled about that job market.

“The fairer sex” is sexist, of course. Sounds like a compliment to you, perhaps, but it’s just wrong! Woke women prefer to be called by the B-word that rhymes with itch and means female dog, judging by the signs I saw proudly bobbing in the gathering, about a tenth the size of your average Trump rally. No men (a few were in attendance) were brandishing those placards, only women. You have to know the rules, you know.

Woke women prefer to be called by the B-word that rhymes with itch and means female dog.

Two teenage girls in rainbow regalia asked my husband and me to snap their photo together. They were in good spirits and enjoying the event and their youth and all, and asked so sweetly that it killed me to say to them with a sweep of a hand (toward the skyline emblazoned with “[obscenity] Men” and “Support Matriarchy,” and “Stay Nasty,” and “The Future is Female”), “I don’t believe in any of this; I’m a Christian.” Their countenance changed and they slunk away, and my husband said he would have taken the photo and that now they’re thinking Christians are mean. Which made me feel bad for the rest of the day.

I said, in my defense, “If they posted that on Facebook, I would be part of the dark side.” But still I kept remembering their fresh young faces and wishing I had found a middle way between yes and no. Faces are a hard thing to say no to. That’s why God tells Ezekiel when dispatching him to an unpleasant confrontational task, “Be not afraid of their words, nor be dismayed at their looks [literally, ‘faces’]” (Ezekiel 2:6).

A man with homemade shoeshine box in tow was easier for my husband to say no to. We were suburbanites with bull’s-eyes on our backs, and the entrepreneur pursued till we stopped. And when my husband said we had very little money, he said, “This one’s a freebie. People will see me serving you and I’ll get business.”

But during the third application to the left shoe, he asked, without looking up, “How much do you think a shine like that is worth?”—and then himself suggested $20. As things got tense after that, I said, “David, let’s give him 10 and get out of here.” But David said no and extended a few singles, and we limped off with one shiny shoe and one dull shoe.

Wisdom! Give us wisdom, Lord! What would Jesus do in this parade? Would He even be here?

After the mayor’s cameo appearance, a woman of color took the mic on the makeshift stage before the Art Museum and said the word “God” a lot, but also interspersed her remarks with Arabic glossolalia. I strained to get the drift of her message, her sentences being disconnected bromides like a hatful of Chinese fortune-cookie sayings picked at random. She ended with an exhortation to be like the strong women in Conakry, Guinea, who endure hard lives.

Which rather seemed to undermine the point about how bad off women are in the United States. But as the senior tempter told the junior tempter in the Screwtape book, “Keep everything hazy in their minds.” And so he does.

And on the train back home I wished I could just fold those two girls in my arms a while and hold them like a mother.