Not Ready To Make Nice

I’m listening to the Dixie Chicks extraordinary new album, and it brings to mind a few questions that keep percolating up when I observe our current political and social discourse. Since when have we started again to buy into the idea that women should ‘make nice’ when they see injustice or idiocy? I thought Gloria and Betty and Bella showed us a different way. I thought we’d learned to speak our minds instead of apologizing for having them.

But I see young women today accepting the subjugation of their minds and bodies not only without a fight, but in defense of those who would oppress. Every time I hear some 20-something bimbette brag about how she didn’t vote in the last few elections because she couldn’t be bothered and it ‘doesn’t matter anyway’ I want genuinely to strangle her skinny neck. When she then enthuses about who she DID vote for on American Idol, I literally want to vomit. Even more frustrating are women who claim to be pro-choice, but don’t see ‘the point’ of organizations like Planned Parenthood and NARAL. If you disagree with their tactics (as I occasionally do), that’s one thing, but that’s a matter for debate and discussion, not disdain and passivity. Have we so quickly forgotten what our foremothers fought and occasionally died for? I want no man, and particularly no woman, legislating what I should think and feel, and I’m tired of being told to sit down and shut up. I’m hearing this again more often, especially from women (what IS your problem, Ann Coulter?!), and this needs to be nipped in the bud. I will stand, I will speak. Get over it. And try listening for a change.

Which is why I love the Dixie Chicks. Not only are they extraordinarily talented women, but they have something to say. And they’ve chosen not to apologize for saying it, which it would be tempting to do in the face of death threats and narrow-minded bans on their music from Clear Channel’s radio monopoly. I mean, they don’t pretend to be Bella Abzug or Alice Paul (look ‘em up, ladies!), but they choose to speak, or rather sing, their minds. Last I heard, they had the right to do so. And their detractors have the right to not buy their albums—but not to threaten their lives.

Keep it up, ladies. You speak for the silent—and increasingly silenced—majority. And you pick a hell of a fiddle. Brava!