You can’t have failed to notice women marching in protest against President Trump over the weekend, not only in the US but around the globe.

I won’t comment about another country’s choice of leader, although the fashion in a social-media fuelled world is to imagine that we all immediately grasp the nuances of another nation’s psyche. I believe that unless you’re living in a country it’s easy to miss the subtleties of a social or political atmosphere, not that that stops people from throwing in their (often worthless) tuppence worth. I do feel equipped, however, to talk about a general sexist male mindset…

Reflexively, I support the women’s march on so many levels. One of the placards I saw was protesting about tax added to sanitary products while male grooming products are tax free. That situation is the same in the UK, and needs urgent change. We -women- just want a level playing field in this regard.

But for some of the speakers…oh dear! Veteran feminist Gloria Steinem declared ‘His widely reported symptoms of mental instability … lead us to question his fitness for the immense responsibility of the office’. In the past, male physicians would declare women, and only women, to be suffering from ‘hysteria‘, a diagnosis that has subsequently been regarded as a nonsense.

Now, I’ve quite a bit of time for Steinem’s record as a feminist, but making an assumption based on hearsay and rumour is not only the female equivalent of diagnosing ‘hysteria’ in Trump, to the extent that the statement should be ridiculed and ignored but also, ironically, suggests some level of verbal hysteria and hyperbole in Steinem herself.

Much of the thrust of the march was ignited by Trump’s ‘Grab them by the pussy’ remarks.

 

This led to the prevalence of ‘pussy hats‘ as a symbol of the march.

You can grab a free pussy hat in Second Life if you teleport over to the Yummy store (L$0) to declare your solidarity with the march. It’s interesting in the way that, often, Second Life can manage to seize the mood of real life and translate that into the pixel world, and this is one manifestation of the virtual world where the real bleeds into the virtual.

Over at Nantra Poses you can also grab a free pose and placard that also captures the mood of yesterday.

Ella wears anti-Trump freebies currently available in SL.

But let’s get back to speakers at the Washington march.

Madonna.

Ah yes…a woman whose career has revolved around sex as a selling point now taking umbrage at Trump’s remark.

A woman who was offering b*** j*** in exchange for Hillary Clinton votes. It was subsequently dismissed as a ‘joke’. The problem is that not everyone gets the ‘joke’ in a remark like that, and ‘jokes’ like this help to reinforce the belief that some men have that elements of sex are simply a barter process. The whole ‘I bought you a Big Mac, so I expect sex in exchange‘ thing is very real in some men’s eyes.  Your ‘jokes’ do feminism no service, Madge.

A woman who will happily pose with men hovering around her crotch, then expressing outrage at Trump?

 

A woman who has made a career of being a sex object moaning about a businessman and latter-day politician objectifying women?

She’s an arch-hypocrite.

Of course, by extension the whole male mindset portrayed and railed against is something that affects naturism, not so much in real life, but in its online portrayal, in and out of Second Life. I’ve spoken, before, about the manner in which ‘naturist’ websites -specifically ‘Tumblr’ sites- contain many, many photographs of naked women in poses, or undertaking sex acts, that are not a fair or reasonable representation of naturism in its boring, mundane, non-sexual reality.

A genuine naturist site doesn’t need open crotch shots, nor should it give the impression that only one gender (female) exists. Yet many of these sites contain the word ‘naturist’ in their title, and help to reinforce the idea in some young (and not so young) minds that a naturist woman is sexually available.

Sites such as these reinforce the wrong idea about the nature of naturism, while comments such as those made about grabbing pussies may have been ‘just locker room talk’ but nonetheless are symptomatic of a male mindset that needs some education in equality and respect of an entire gender. This extends from The White House to the man in the pub, the man next door and work colleagues alike. Pussies aren’t for either grabbing, from the current tenant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to the adolescent-minded blogger about naturism.

Note: I’m merely holding a placard in the photos. That should not necessarily be seen as an endorsement of their message about another country’s elected leader. I’m easier with the reverse side, though. We, women, aren’t ‘up for grabs’.

Ella