WOMEN’S EQUALITY DAY

The Armor of Resistance

Otherwise known as mom jeans

Photo by on

I have always been a person who stands up.

When I was maybe eight- or nine-years old riding the school bus, the neighborhood bully would saunter up and down the aisle looking for an excuse to harass someone. These were the days before seat belts and bus monitors, when we would open the windows on the first glorious days of spring and fill the bus with the boisterous energy of children at play. One day the bully ordered the girl in the seat in front of me to sit down. She was standing sideways, leaning against the window, her blond hair flying. Free.

There is nothing more threatening to an insecure man than a woman free.

As the girl collapsed under the bully’s command, cowering into her green vinyl seat, first my anger rose, then my resolve, and then me, standing to meet the bully’s gaze.

“Sit down,” he ordered me.

“No.”

He delivered a black eye for my defiance, but I did not sit down.

A long history of protest

I did not know this at the time, of course, but history is rife with stories of women who stood up. Precious few have been recorded, but my own experience tells me that on…