In 1995, the United Nations’ Beijing Declaration promised gender equality by ending violence against women, ensuring our full participation in decision-making, and promoting our rights and well-being. Thirty years later, this promise has not only been egregiously broken, but American women are under attack in ways we never saw coming.
Let’s start with violence against women. According to the WHO, which unfortunately the USA has left, one in three women have experienced either physical and/or sexual violence at the hands of a man. My father was physically abusive, and I personally was almost sexually assaulted at age 14 by my friend’s older brother. One of my sisters and one of my closest friends were both raped. I have no doubt that I know many other women who just haven’t told me because no victim really wants to discuss it. I don’t blame them. The lack of support for women who have undergone violence is despicable.
Approximately 63% of sexual assaults are not reported to the police, often due to fear of retaliation, stigma, or lack of trust in the justice system. Why a lack of trust? Well, out of every 1,000 sexual assaults reported, only about 50 lead to an arrest (NOW) with fewer than 1% of them resulting in a felony conviction (Washington Post).
In 2019, the Violence Against Women Act, a cornerstone law protecting survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault, lapsed after the Trump administration and Senate Republicans failed to reauthorize it. This was largely due to opposition from the NRA over proposed gun control measures. Turns out, pregnant women are more likely to be murdered than to die from obstetric causes and these homicides are linked to a deadly mix of intimate partner violence and firearms (Harvard). According to our federal government, it's better to keep guns in the hands of violent men than to address this femicide.
In early 2025, the second Trump administration imposed a sweeping freeze on federal grants administered by the Office on Violence Against Women (The Trace). This action has disrupted funding for crisis hotlines, shelter services, and legal aid programs nationwide. Organizations are now required to comply with executive orders that ban federal funds from being used for programs associated with "gender ideology" or diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. Somehow supporting women who have experienced violence at the hands of men is “gender ideology” and therefore a DEI program? WTF???!!!!
Yep. That’s the world we now live in. In fact, the endless drama over those three little letters (DEI) has become so radioactive that even scientists can’t get grants about “diverse” plants. And the words “woman” and “women” have been scrubbed from federal health grants, erasing us from critical data sets and access to funding that barely favored us to begin with (just 2% of medical research is devoted to female-specific conditions). And in January, NASA employees were ordered to "drop everything" and scrub mentions of women in leadership from the agency’s websites by the end of the day (NPR). There goes the Beijing Declaration’s promise to “promote our rights”. And just to be clear, while “women” is no longer allowed, saying “men” and “white man” is still okay (The Guardian).
So what about our “well being” and “participation in decision-making”? The assault on our bodily autonomy goes way beyond whatever you feel about abortion. Today, American women are being arrested for miscarrying. Just read these articles on Brittney Watts, Brittney Poolaw, and Latice Fisher, all low-income women of color. In fact, more than 200 women have been prosecuted for pregnancy-related outcomes just in the first year after Roe V. Wade was overturned (The Guardian).
And to make matters worse, Texas law enforcement recently used nationwide license plate reader networks to search for a woman suspected of self-managing an abortion. So now women are being tracked when driving from state to state (Electronic Frontier Foundation).
Texas has also ended programs collecting maternal mortality data (Houston Chronicle). So even though the U.S. has the highest maternal mortality rate of any developed nation, and Texas has some of the worst rates (especially for Black/Hispanic women), their solution to the maternal mortality crisis is to stop counting moms who die in childbirth.
And in Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Nebraska lawmakers are pushing to eliminate no-fault divorce, an essential legal protection for women in abusive marriages (The Guardian). In these same states, lax gun laws only exacerbate the danger for these victims.
So, what’s fueling this current war on women? It’s not just this presidential administration, it’s the largest cultural machine behind it: the manosphere. A digital universe where influencers, incel (involuntarily-celebate) forums, and self-proclaimed "alpha males" have built massive platforms by declaring “masculinity” is under siege. Men are losing out, and women are to blame. Their definition of masculinity? Anything anti-feminine. If you’re a man, you can be stoic, angry, and tough. Just never cry, nurture, or be empathetic. And above all, don’t let a woman have the same rights as you. They are beneath you. And if this mindset isolates you and doesn’t get you laid, take women by force. After all God made them to serve you.
So mamas, what are we at AMONG OTHER THINGS going to do about this?
First, we must talk about it. Call it out. Invite our male allies to stand up for women, not as saviors, but as co-feminists. We must protect each other. We must vote (while we still can). We must support women-led organizations, businesses, films, and media. We must amplify these stories, and we must understand that this is more than just about our rights. It’s about white male dominance over any “other”. And they know it. So let’s make sure we know it too.
Join us on June 18th at our next in-person Monthly event. With a cocktail/mocktail in hand, we will stand in solidarity, talk about how fabulous we all are, and laugh at the ridiculousness of anyone thinking women shouldn’t be anything but equal.
And don’t forget to listen and subscribe to our podcast, Mommy Has Questions. We will be discussing these topics the next two weeks as we wrap our first season.
Follow us on Instagram. And learn more about our writer, Tiffany Hodges.
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