Just one day after the 45th annual March for Life, Washington, D.C., and several other cities around the country, hosted the 2nd annual Women's March. This event started last year to protest the election of Donald Trump as the 45th president of the United States. Last year's march seemed to be a vulgar, emotional display of liberal craziness, from Madonna threatening to blow up the White House to participants wearing hats and costumes resembling female genitalia to show that women are more than their genitals. I know, it didn't make sense to me either.
From what I've seen so far, it seems that this year the Women's March dialed down a little bit compared to last year, although some have reported seeing the genitalia hats again. However, the march doesn't seem to have gotten any less hypocritical and nonsensical. Don't understand what I mean by that? Let me break it down.
Reasons
In order for a march/protest to be effective and taken seriously, it helps if you have a solid, unified purpose. The March for Life clearly demonstrates their purpose of believing in life for all from conception to natural death. The Women's March, however, greatly fails in this regard. A lot of their participants don't really seem to know why they're there or what exactly they're protesting. The ones that do have a reason for being there all have a different reason.
Children
In college, I always went with my school to the March for Life. When I came back, I always liked scrolling through social media to see other people's/group's photos and stories from their experience at the march. Of course, while scrolling through March for Life related posts, I'd always stumble upon those that were bashing it. There always seemed to be a handful of people who would post photos of children holding signs at the March for Life and go off about how horrible and disgusting it was that parents brought their kids to the march and had them hold signs when they didn't even know what they were protesting. Then, this Women's March came about and people starting posting pictures of children holding signs and applauding them for standing up for themselves, their sisters, and/or their future. Double standards much?
Trump
One of the myriad of reasons people have given for participating in the Women's March has been protesting Trump, his policies, and the way he talks about women (more on that in a minute). Yet, at the same time, they're carrying and/or posting photos of signs that read "you're so vain, you probably think this march is about you." If one of your reasons for being at the march is to protest Trump, then yes, the march is kind of about him.
Back on the language topic, if you're upset by the offensive way Trump has talked about women in the past, I better not see you reading or watching anything in the Fifty Shades of Grey franchise. You can't be offended when guys treat women like objects while simultaneously perpetuating that culture by buying into work that encourages it.
Counter-Protesters
I almost always saw counter-protesters at the March for Life, and everyone seemed to just mind their business and ignore them. From what I've heard, the Women's March isn't exactly cool with people who don't have liberal agendas attending the march. At last year's march, a former Planned Parenthood worker who is now a pro-life advocate, Abby Johnson, first had difficulty having her organization be accepted to participate in the march, and then was tackled by protesters at the actual march...and she was visibly pregnant with twins at the time. That's definitely not okay.
There are so many other things that bother me about the Women's March, but I don't have the time to write them all here, and I'm sure you don't want to spend all day reading a single blog post. I just think it's important to really consider these kinds of things before deciding to support this "movement."
