Channeling The White Hot Rage
This was originally posted on Facebook on May 5, 2022 in reaction to the leaked Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Pretend like this post is about funny cat antics (that was for the Facebook algorithm). Really it's a post about women. And a supernova-like level of fire.
I didn't set out to fight for women's issues. I had good reason to. But I didn't want to build a life around my gender just because we shouldn't get assaulted and have so much freaking injustice. I just didn't want to make that my main focus.
I didn't, but it came up all the damn time.
You can't be a woman in park rangering and then wildland firefighting and then Homeland Security and also science and also technology and not have men think they know all the things and you can't possibly. Especially if you are tall and blonde.
I have stories. They are freaking exasperating. I'm not telling them right here right now today. They would fit in a series of books. And I wouldn't even know where to start.
I tried to explain to someone yesterday why I have an edge.
But how do you explain 40-something years of fighting to be heard? Of repeated trauma? Of navigating dicey situations? Of not being seen? Or of being only seen as one thing?
Every freaking bloody week up on my feed here one of my female connections is dealing with some prior horror from some guy. Or some current horror.
And don't even come up in here with your "not all men" BS. We all know it's not all men. And don't come up in here with your "women can be violent too" BS. Duh. Of course they can.
But the problem overall nationwide and worldwide is the men. And I shouldn't have to write a disclaimer in every damn post because inevitably some dude will come up on here and make those points.
WHEN THE POINT IS TO LISTEN TO THE WOMEN.
There's a knowing between women. Because the threat is always there. We've learned to live with it so we're not always watching for it every day. A lot of us, anyway.
But then one of your friends needs to suddenly hide out, and the network of women mobilizes. Schemes are developed to find safe spaces. Assessments are made about calling the police or not.
Or someone has been through some kind of assault. Then you have to figure out what the hell to do.
You can't undo it. You have to walk through the damn trauma. Or someone new does. Someone who was innocent before. Someone who didn't know of the horror. Now you have something in common that you didn't want. Only it's different every time. It's different for everyone.
One in three women in this country have been through it at least once. Some of us more than once.
It changes you. You never get that back.
~~~
Okay here's one story. It's not about assault. It's just about being a woman in a workplace.
I made security points to some fire chiefs once after law enforcement responded to our state office late at night and couldn't get in. Highway Patrol said it was a safety situation and we needed a better protocol so I wrote it up. This was before I ever worked in security.
The fragile fire chiefs on the state side didn't take security advice well from some young fed who was a Midwestern woman with a ponytail. Even though she was just passing along what the state highway patrol *men* had said.
I dealt with a hostile work environment situation for two years after that. Oh also because one of the fire chiefs decided he was in love with me and tried to sleep with me on a work trip to Arizona. He came back and said how awful I was to a meteorologist who already hated me. And to the rest of the state fire chiefs who already had their panties in a bunch about the security thing.
My bosses, both men, backed me. As much as they could.
But the whole four years I was there was fairly hostile because the first boss I'd had didn't hire me and hated that I'd gotten hired. So did another guy there who wanted the job. There were rumors that I'd slept with the regional fire director who I'd never met in order to get the job. Made that first meeting with that director awkward. And then of course there were rumors after I met him for the first time because it was a dinner meeting. Didn't matter how many other professionals were there or that we talked fire science and regional fire management the whole damn time.
Later after I moved to DC I ran into similar drama at Homeland Security. Working with mostly law enforcement and ex-military was not fabulous for, again, the blonde woman with a ponytail. Now from California.
~~~
Anytime you hang with a group of women one thing that can happen is you have this knowing bond about life as a woman.
You don't have to explain all the details of certain things like you would if men were there. You just don't.
I'm in a dream group with a bunch of the neatest people. Only women. Some of them have been doing this for 20 or 30 years. There are some deep bonds there. But you can meet a total stranger in the group and still have a connection because there's this knowing about life as a woman. A deep wisdom. Getting it. Understanding the struggles.
I learned from some of those women about what they went through trying to make it as single women or recently divorced women or whatever in the 70s when it was a fight to get your own damn checking account.
I'd heard the stories from my own family. But they're everywhere.
My Grandma had to go to a different town to get home loan after she got divorced because they wouldn't do it in a small town. Yet she had a full-time job and cash.
~~~
The thing that keeps getting me this week over and over is that I had this idea as a young woman that things were different. That they would be.
That we were going to evolve. That I wouldn't have to fight like my mom and my grandmas and everyone similar.
But the truth is that I have.
I've been in the meetings about port security or border security or intelligence sharing or government facility security or disaster technology or whatever and been the only person not wearing a dark black suit and the only one who is a woman. The only one who can't get a word in edgewise. Even though I'm one of the experts on whatever the subject is. Or I'm the person who catalyzed the meeting. Or whatever.
I'm tired, too. Like so many others.
I'm hurt.
I'm sad.
I'm feeling a lot of the same things I felt after the 2016 election.
Because this is more set in now. It's metastasized. Because the society is much more broken now.
~~~
One of my friends has been telling me that her neighbors have black flags hanging out. Do you know what that means?
The short answer is that it means no quarter shall be given. It's a threat of violence.
Many of us where we live see these kinds of signs all over the place anyway. The male toxicity. The overblown trucks. The F*** Biden signs all over. Like as if that's okay.
I expect that a lot of these people are dangerous. They're the kinds of people that hurt me when I was growing up. I know they're dangerous. The fact that they're putting up flags and notices is even more disturbing.
They're empowering each other.
They're scary.
But here's the thing.
They're also scared.
There are a bunch of damned cowards in that crowd. They are people like Kevin McCarthy who have just a small miniscule moment of moral clarity and then sell it out. They're afraid of tolerance and empowered women and gay people and anyone they don't understand. Their solution is fear, and trying to get rid of the rest of us. Push back in some closet or kitchen or something.
But there's more of us.
~~~
When I was a kid, we had a neighbor threatening us. He used to drive by the house flipping us off. My dad would wave and smile and yell hi. Infuriated the living daylights out of the grouchy old neighbor.
I learned that kind of fight.
I learned to exasperate people who wanted to keep me down by showing up over and over and over. And by getting shit done. Well.
By shining like a hot ball of fire. By barreling through. By sheer, raw, primal persistence.
Or something.
~~~
I don't know what it is that's kept me going, but I freaking made it. So far.
And I've done some good. It's been pretty brutal, but I've made it.
Oh wait I know what it is.
Yeah - it's all of the other people who kept me going through it.
Because at least some of the people can be pretty damn awesome.
We help each other. We can do way more with that.
I am convinced that we can energize the majority of voters to take the damn high road and fight for what we want and for tolerance and for rights and big vision and all of this crap that's good for humans. Stuff we want for our kids and for our futures and for ourselves.
I'm convinced that we can pull together some big national movement to do all of that. To empower each other.
But I don't have the right words. I don't mean the way we've been doing.
I mean huge and big and bold and bright and shiny. Like a supernova.
I'm convinced that all of that light and support and amazingness will explode like a star.
Will light up the darkness.
And this metastasized cancer of fear can go back to its hidey-holes.
We will outshine it.
~~~
It's a big ass vision.
But I reckon I'm not the only one with some white hot rage. I reckon we can use it for good.
We can use it to power some kind of supernova.
Absolutely.
Okay so here's the thing. I've been working on this thing to help us do something like this for a couple of years. Finally got at least a little bit of support to launch the damn thing. Again.
Getting the last starter pieces and parts in place and will have it up and running in a week or so.
Stick around and we've got ideas for the supernova action. Or at least to get us started. It's a big idea. But we've got to do some things differently.
I think we can.
In the meantime I'm still breathing. But I do intend to bring some lightning. And start some big damn fires.
I think we can.
Keep the faith. Keep the fire. We've got things we can do with it.
And we will.