When You Really Care About Women

You work to keep them safe

Spare me the elected officials, corporate PR people, and other figureheads with their hashtags and other niceties claiming to respect women. In the scheme of things, these gestures are meaningless - unless, of course, they’re combined with meaningful action.

As a woman about to turn 59, I don’t want to be patronized, treated like an infant, or told how I should think.

Here’s what I do want:

For corporations to stop the sanctimonious virtue signaling and to instead focus on improving their supply chains and labor force practices. You can’t claim to love women, then simultaneously have your stuff made in countries where known labor abuses are occurring -including regular rapes of women- just to improve your bottom line.

I also want elected officials to prioritize the safety of women (and men). Emptying jails, creating bail “reform” initiatives, and demoralizing cops are putting women in real danger.

I wonder what this DePaul University student assaulted in broad daylight or the New York City woman robbed and hit with a hammer while awaiting the subway (both NYC and Chicago have experienced a surge in crimes against women) believe is more important: grandstanding and empty sentiments on social media because it’s International Women’s Day, or a strong police presence coupled with holding offenders accountable.

When you continually release known violent criminals and demoralize police to the point where they don’t feel supported, have curtailed proactive policing, and are retiring en masse, you are making us women less safe.

Though some of us are skilled in self-defense, we’re biologically no match for the strength and speed of most men. I long to visit NYC and Chicago again, and to go out at night alone in my own city, without worrying about being assaulted by someone who the criminal justice system should have kept behind bars.

If you care about women, support law enforcement by creating legislation that deters violence towards cops, stop using them as political pawns, bringing them up for unwarranted criminal charges, and defunding them only to refund them because crime is rising or your poll numbers are falling.

When you start taking my safety, and the safety of other women seriously, when you respect women overseas working in abusive conditions instead of using them as a commodity to pad your bottom line, when you stop releasing violent repeat offenders back on to the streets, then we’ll talk. Until then, excuse me if I ignore your “celebration” of women.