The January 21st Women’s March drew nearly 5 million participants worldwide, with marchers coming together from New York to Accra.
For many women attending the marches in Washington, D.C. or the 672 other locations across the world, it was a first foray into activism. The seas of pink “pussy” hats, and signs reading “Her Body, Her Choice” and “Pussy Grabs Back” were spread across the globe, signaling a demand for respect for the female body.
But for Elle Williams, a transgender woman in her first year at Parsons, the march was yet another event in a string of feminist actions that failed to include the group experiencing the highest rates of hate violence homicides, sexual violence, and police violence: transgender women.
According to a 2013 report by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, transgender survivors and victims were 7 times more likely to experience violence during police interactions than cisgender survivors and victims. The report stated that 67% of hate violence homicide victims in 2013 were transgender women, and transgender women were 1.8 times more likely to experience sexual violence than other survivors.
Williams said that she chose not to attend the Women’s March because of the lack of transgender representation. “I support women marching for their rights, but I wasn’t in full support of the march because when you looked at it, there were no highly-publicized trans speakers.”
Out of 60 speakers, the Washington D.C. March included three transgender speakers— fewer than the number of cisgender men who spoke, according to the Women’s March list of speakers. For Williams, the problem was not with the visuals and chants centered around the female body, but with the lack of attention paid to trans women.
Meredith Bastian and Cybele Ramirez, both students at Lang, were hesitant to completely reject the use of female bodies in activism, given the “state of emergency” they both felt the United States is in. For women like Rose Fox, a senior at Lang, the vagina is “wonderful, powerful, symbolic,” but depictions of it that aimed for empowerment often fell short.
“I do feel like a lot of the march that was just to protect vaginas was valid, but I also feel like that promotes that sexual drive, like it’s all about our pussy, and it’s not,” Williams said. “As women, even though that should be included in the conversation, we are so much more than our vaginas.”
“If you’re fighting for your vaginas to be appreciated, why wouldn’t you welcome the people who are appreciating you blatantly with a form of reprojection?” Williams asked.
Ramirez agreed, “It’s almost like by representing your freedoms or your beliefs by a body part or an object, it’s limiting in a sense. Sure it’s liberating, but it’s this very weird tension.”
For others, the word “pussy” itself was unnerving. “I had never heard my mom say pussy until Donald Trump said it, and there’s something very jarring about it,” Bastian said. “There are times when I find it empowering to use the word pussy, as a word I was afraid of when I was younger,” But, she continued, “It still doesn’t quite feel right. I don’t know if it’s our word.”
While Women’s March organizers publicly tried to be inclusive of a range of issues, solidarity doesn’t always come easily. “I think probably anyone could have shown up to the march and have disappointed in some way. But, protests aren’t homogeneous,” said Genevieve Yue, a professor of culture and media at Lang. “In fact, the less homogeneous the better, because if it’s going to be a mass movement, you have to bring in all these different perspective and backgrounds.”
“I think for right now we are all fighting the same fight. And if there’s a group that’s only interested in one aspect of that fight, then so be it,” she said.
For others, like Rose Fox, a senior at Lang, who has been attending marches and rallies in Washington, D.C. since she was a child, a top priority has always been staying safe at protests, which could mean excluding those who do not see eye-to-eye. “At large events you just want bodies, but in organizing [political movements], I have to say, I would be exclusionary. I am not going to organize for someone who will condone behavior that I won’t condone,” Fox said.
While Yue advocated the inclusion of women who are less “woke” in order to advance the cause, Andrea Nappi, a student at Lang, argued that the current state of the country, one which she considers a “state of emergency” requires solidarity. “Bringing in these sort of aspects that are not inclusive is making a divide in itself that really isn’t going to solve any problems or fight any issues.”
Many women expressed uncertainty about what role female bodies would have in their personal activism moving forward, but few were willing to completely reject their use. Despite her skepticism about “pussy hats” Yue said that “in the name of inclusivity,” she would want to “encourage, rather than discourage, the bringing into the fold people new to activism.”
Illo by: Alex Gilbeaux
Anna is the Features Editor for the Free Press. She is a senior at Lang, majoring in Journalism + Design and minoring in Politics.
