Why Criticism Of Rashida Tlaib & Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Only Proves Women Don't Need Your Approval
Adhering to standards of 'permissible' language does not serve women well — at all.
Facebook As all of social media knows by now, Michigan Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib is facing criticism for a statement she made about President Donald Trump shortly after being sworn into Congress on Thursday.
As reported by CNN, "Speaking to a crowd at an event sponsored by the progressive group MoveOn, Tlaib recalled the moment she won her election in November.
"'And when your son looks at you and says, 'Mama look, you won. Bullies don't win,' and I said, 'Baby, they don't,' because we're gonna go in there and we're going to impeach the motherf****r.""
Rep. Tlaib refuses to bow to apologize for her use of profanity.
And earlier today, fellow newly minted Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez announced her unequivocal support on Twitter.
All of which got me thinking ...
When I was a young mother, and my daughter was in middle school, 11 or 12 years old, I came across a bundle of papers written in her handwriting her bedroom.
(For a moment, we can sidestep the issue of whether I should have read those papers or not, or even if, at that age, I should have been cleaning her room in the first place. I would answer yes, just as I would say it's right for parents to monitor the social media transactions of their adolescent children.)
What was most shocking about the papers was that they were filled with profanity.
I found myself reading words in my daughter's handwriting that I had never heard her say out loud. And there was a force and an energy to her language that I had never seen nor felt in her at all.
Whose strong, angry and powerful voice was this and why had I, her mother, never heard it before?
I thought back to my own early adolescence and a notebook I'd kept, in which I would write my inner most thoughts. While it may not have been laced with profanity, it was very transgressive, talking about my early sexual awakening, or my strong feelings about certain boys — words and stories that were never meant for anyone else to see.
These two little moments from my life come back to me now in the wake of Republicans' faux outrage at the audacity of a Muslim American woman referring to the vulgar, racist, misogynistic, autocratic, criminal tyrant currently abusing the power of the presidency as a motherf****r.
I don't know about you, but not only did I find myself applauding Representative Tlaib, but I've found similar words coming out of my mouth in increasing numbers over the past two years.
It's like I have been taken back to the days of adolescence where the only place it was safe for a girl to express her rage was to the silent pages of her own journal, this time letting the words find their way to my voice box and out of my mouth.
I too am writing and speaking my rage.
This notion that women must somehow always be genteel, polite, and lady-like — in stark contrast to the boorish and even potentially criminal behavior of p***y grabbers like Trump and Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh — is one of the ways in which patriarchy keeps women under its big fat thumb.
Adhering to these standards of "permissible" language does not serve women well at all.
I can (sort of) understand some who have criticized Tlaib, saying that in using such words, she made the conversation about the language rather than the serious issue of impeaching a rogue and possibly criminal president, the job of the Congress as started in Article One of the United States Constitution, which she's been sworn to uphold.
I can (sort of) understand ...
No, wait. F*** that.
Because another memory has come back to me — of meeting a woman who'd been raped, and her story about how she opened the door of her apartment building to her own soon-to-be rapist because she didn't want him to think she was "impolite."
She opened the door for her own rapist ... so she wouldn't be seen as impolite.
Let that sink in.
If these young women in Congress have found ways to unlearn the oppressive and self-limiting codes of behavior others still wish to impose on them, let that be a lesson to all women who rage with profanity in our anger.
Let us dance with abandon in our joy!
Book-ending the condemnation of Rep. Tlaib's so-called obscenity (it's kind of hard to see her word as anything but a reflection of the motherf****r's obscene behavior itself) is the recent ridiculous attempt to discredit another woman of color for ... wait for it ... dancing!!!!
As explained in the New York Times:
"On the eve of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s swearing-in as the youngest woman ever elected to the House of Representatives, video footage from her college days suddenly appeared on the internet ... The footage was from a four-minute-20-second dance video made by Boston University students in 2010, when Ms. Ocasio-Cortez was an undergraduate ...
"An edited version of the original footage surfaced when a Twitter account with the handle @AnonymousQ1776 published it online. 'Here is America’s favorite commie know-it-all acting like the clueless nitwit she is,' read the tweet from @AnonymousQ1776, which incorrectly described it as a video from her high school days. The account was deleted before it resurfaced and disappeared again on Saturday."
The video of Rep. Ocasio-Cortez whirling around on a rooftop re-enacting an iconic scene from The Breakfast Club should serve as a reminder to women of all ages that we can express our rage and we can live our joy.
And f*** all the real motherf*****s who are using their power to take health care away from people with pre-existing conditions, redraw political districts to entrench their party's anachronistic power, truncate the rights of women to make decisions about our own bodies, destroy the planet and keep shifting the wealth of this nation upwards to the top one percent.
F*** those motherf*****s.
And dance with your sisters in the people's house.
Marsha Rosenzweig Pincus is an educator, writer, creative consultant and post mid-life woman, creating a third act, living on her own terms and writing for her life. For more, visit her website.