The
Folly Of One-Day Protests
This past March 8th was International Women’s Day. It originally started 108 years ago as a way
to celebrate and push for the rights of women.
It was started by the Socialist Party of America, which probably blows
the minds of a few folks, first because something with that much traction was
started by a group that calls themselves “socialist”, but also because it was
yet another actual “third political party” which, of course, “should not exist”
according to the eternally damnable socio-political script.
Anyway, this year, the women’s groups decided they were going to put an
added “spin” to their celebration. They
wanted women to “boycott” the world for one day. Women were told to not go to work if they
could help it, don’t shop, don’t shop online, and pretty much do nothing just
for that one day. And to show
solidarity, they were asked to wear red, even if they had to go to work.
They called it “The Day Without A Woman”, and it was meant to be like the
“Day Without Immigrants”, where all immigrants were asked to stay home that one
day.
Sadly, though, it turned out to be more
hype than protest.
For starters, there really was very little notice about this. It was sort of dumped on most of the public with
maybe a day or two warning. I’m sure that
there were plenty of women that wanted to participate that would be in a quandary
of sorts. It’s one thing to show up on
the day after President Trump’s inauguration, on a weekend, and march and
protest. It’s another to just drop
everything with a day or two notice in the middle of the week to take part in a
“strike”. I’m sure with a lot more media
coverage that this would have had more of a public impact.
Plus, as we learned from the “Day Without Immigrants”, there are
consequences to just not showing up at work.
Many places are considered “at-will employment”, which means that the
boss can just fire you without any reason.
Several people who simply refused to show up that day were
told the next day that their jobs were gone, and there was nothing that they
could do about it.
But there’s a larger problem with these kinds of “protests” that make
them self-defeating, and it’s something that we’ve seen plenty of times in the
past.
Remember the years of gas-gouging?
In the early half of the 2000’s, gas prices seemed to go up and up
without any reason other than for greed.
People were pissed about it, but yet they were not pissed off enough to
do something serious about it. They
still wanted their overpriced and overhyped gas-chugging urban assault
vehicles. They still wanted to travel
and to take vacations.
So their compromise was to have a series of so-called “gas-outs”, where
they would take just one day and not visit a gas station to put gas in their
cars, and that would supposedly “stick it” to Big Oil.
Except that it didn’t. Every
single one of those one-day “gas-outs” were nothing but big huge stinking
failures. Every single one of them. They didn’t “stick it” to Big Oil. They never could “stick it” to them. And Big Oil didn’t care. They knew that this kind of protest was
inherently doomed to fail.
Let’s start with the obvious: a “one-day strike” is inherently doomed to
fail as long as it involves a non-essential service or business. If a police department or a fire department
or ambulance service or a hospital decided to have a one-day strike, then that
would be serious, because it’s an essential service. But not showing up to buy gas for one day? Big flipping deal! You’ll just be back the next day. Don’t show up at a store to go shopping
today? It means nothing if you’re just
going to go back there tomorrow.
Did you know that all stores in America used to be closed by law on
Sundays until just a few decades ago? So
the loss of one day of commerce is really nothing in the long run. It’s just an impromptu holiday.
So telling women to not shop on one day?
Big deal! Everyone knows that they’ll
be back to the stores the next day.
But tell them to suddenly not work for one day? Well that could translate into them being out
for more than just that one day.
And let’s not forget who we’re talking about when you’re carrying on this
laughable “protest”. We’re basically
talking about the bigoted conservative and neo-conservative and “traditional
Christian” groups, the Cult of Trump, that strongly believe that women should
be barefoot, pregnant, silent, submissive, and in the kitchen instead of the
workplace. The ones that believe that we
should be living in some dystopian sexist society straight
out of Margaret Atwood’s “Handmaid’s Tale” novel. You’re not hurting them when you pull this
kind of stunt, even if it had any meaningful impact... you’re just validating their
stereotypes and feeding their bigotries!
Let’s get brutally honest here... if you’re serious about “making a
statement”, then you need to do something significant and long-term. Unless you’re working in an essential service
such as police or fire or healthcare, then any one-day “outage” will be dismissed
as nothing more than an impotent tantrum from a bunch of whiners. You need to look at meaningful sacrifices,
and you need to be the one that is making those sacrifices.
Remember the old parental disciplinary line of “this will hurt me more
than it will you”? Use that as your
guide when it comes to making your “statement”.
When you’re going up against entrenched power, then you need to
understand that whatever you have in mind has to hurt you a lot before it can
even start to affect them.
And while I’m on the subject, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that
there were just too many protests for the “Day Without A Woman” to have any
kind of significant meaning to it. I
mean you had the nationwide Trump protests with celebrities and pink hats that
really made the statement that needed to be made. Having another protest similar to that just a
month-plus afterward and just because it would fit into International Women’s
Day? That was overkill.
As a practical libertarian, I’m all for the equal rights of women. Equal pay for equal work should be the
default in any society that claims to be “free”. That is what being a libertarian – and not
the “pretend” kind that you see in the media - is really all about. But simply wanting equal rights and being “pissed
off” for not having them yet is not enough.
Think back to what women had to endure a hundred years ago just to get
the right to vote. Do you really think
they would be content with an endless stream of protests designed to “make a
statement”? Of course not! So why settle now? It’s time to stop “making a statement” and
start making the goal happen.
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