Day 4
Today I am giving you a dystopic story about a not-so-unbelievable scenario that mirrors what women experience regularly, but takes it to the next level. What happens when someone angry at whatever decides to take action? What if it is several somebody’s? The inspiration for this story comes variously from incels, MRAs, and Sarah Everard. If you don’t remember Sarah Everard, I wrote a piece about her in a previous year.
SAY HER NAME
“Did he really say what I thought he said?” Elle scowled at the TV, only because he wasn’t there to scowl at.
“I think…yes, he did.” Brad went back to his work. He was used to Elle, and her attempts to get the president to stop putting his foot in his mouth. He wasn’t going to get involved. It wasn’t his fight.
Elle flew down the hall. She burst into the Oval Office like a whirlwind. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” She glared at Simon, complacent behind the desk, looking as smug as when he won the election.
“Someone is going around shooting women…and promising to shoot more.” Simon was undisturbed by the restrained rage in Elle’s manner and voice. “So I’m taking steps to protect the women.”
“Really? You tell the women to stay home. Just…don’t leave the house. Don’t go anywhere men go. Oh, sure, they can go to the grocery store, or the kiddie play ground…but work? You shut out that possibility. Can they go to the theatre, as long as they’re with their husband? What about parties? Travel abroad? Stay home. You deal with a shooter by punishing women.”
Simon frowned. “I’m not punishing them. I’m protecting them.”
“You need to rescind that recommendation. Women are people, and citizens, and deserve to go where their life takes them.” Elle dropped into the chair with an authoritative drop. She wasn’t going anywhere.
“It’s too late. Congress is passing an emergency law making it illegal for women to be anyplace dangerous.”
“Great. Now they can’t even stay home. Haven’t you heard of domestic violence?” Elle shoved a file toward him; she was working on his initiative to end domestic violence when she heard the report. “This is just this month’s incidents.” The file was thick.
“I don’t need to see that. I’m the one who proposed an initiative to end domestic violence, remember?”
“I’m the one who proposed it to you, wrote up every speech you made about it, and figured out how it would work and how to pay for it. You just spoke the words. Are you saying now they didn’t mean anything to you?”
“Of course they did.” He was on the defensive now. “If they didn’t, I wouldn’t have said them. You could write anything you like in my speeches, but if I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t deliver it.”
Elle turned her back. There was no talking to him when he was in this mood; she certainly learned that in sixteen months of being his advisor on women’s issues. In spite of that, she had no intention to leave until he recanted. She swung back around with a jerk that almost gave her whiplash. “Wait…did you say…a law?”
“Yes. We saw an emergency situation, and both parties worked together to pass it quickly. I’ll be signing it this afternoon.”
“Oh. I see.” She fell silent. What could she say without swearing?
“You’ll be there?” He watched her anxiously; Elle’s opinion meant a lot to him. She was more intelligent than he was, and more informed on a number of issues, not just those that pertained to women. He couldn’t understand why she was going on about this.
“No, I won’t.”
“It’s not like you to be petty.”
“Petty? No, I’m not being petty. I’m just…obeying the law, right?” She threw the file on his desk. “I’ll pack up my things.”
“Don’t….don’t quit.” Simon was desperate.
“I have no choice. The new law forbids me to work here…or practically anywhere, except maybe a convent.” Elle swept out of the room but she was slouching inside. Her world just went up in a puff of smoke...along with the worlds of everyone she knew, and probably everyone anybody knew. She fired off an email to all the females on the White House staff. They wouldn’t be in when work started in the morning. She threw the stuff on her desk into a box, ignoring Brad’s attempts to get her to speak, and joined the flow of women heading toward the door, each carrying a box full of the personal detritus they collected over the past sixteen months. Most of them were in tears.
The city was calm; the president hadn’t announced the new initiative yet. There were no obstacles on her way home, and she closed the door and dropped to the sofa. The box of stuff fell on the floor and she left it lying.
Geoff got home two hours later, leaving early when he heard the president’s announcement and signing ceremony. Elle was still where she fell, the room dark and unwelcoming. She wasn’t asleep or crying; she was just sitting. He sat beside her and took her hand. She shook it off. “Oh, come on, Elle, I haven’t done anything. Don’t take it out on me.” He realized he sounded grouchy and backed up to try again. “We’re fighting this. I’ve already started a petition. All the men in the office signed when the women walked out, leaving them to empty their own trashcans, dust their own offices, cook their own food in the cafeteria, and work on their projects without their women partners. It’s gonna be a disaster.”
“Yeah. How’s Mandy gonna survive?” Elle’s sister never went to college. She married at sixteen, and divorced at thirty, her husband an abusive alcoholic. She had three kids and relied on her job to support them. Her husband sent child support only sporadically. He had no job most of the time. “She called several times today.”
“What’d she say?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t answer.”
Elle’s response worried Geoff. She and Mandy were close; she would never refuse to answer the calls from her sister in a time of need. He flipped on the light and pulled her to her feet. “Come on. We’re gonna take a shower.” He had to get her moving.
The city emptied as women returned home. The jobs being done by women went undone in many cases, or were filled with men who didn’t have the vast years of experience their predecessors had. The economy faltered, trying to adjust to the new reality, before it crashed in the most spectacular conflagration the country had ever seen. Single mothers had no way to feed their children, and resorted to begging…or to prostitution, entering one of the few jobs still open to them. “Not legally”, Elle thought. “After all, prostitutes are places where men go.”
The shootings didn’t stop. The shooters now targeted those women who refused to be silenced, who refused to join the walk out and lock in even to show the world they were needed. They targeted women’s marches and women’s forums. They discovered the online women’s underground, learned the women’s identities, and showed up at their homes. They started shooting women at the grocery store, even doing the tasks that are usually reserved to women.
“It’s not just unfeminine women they hate.” Geoff read the headline and pitched the newspaper across the room. There was no need to read it. It said the same things it said every day…a depressing list of numbers, cities, and states. They never listed the names of the women. To most people, they were just a number in the paper. Only their loved ones mourned. Many petitions arrived at the White House and to Congress, but they appeared to disappear in a black hole. There was no one who cared.
“I’m going to…do something. I’m going crazy here.” Elle shot from her sofa, moving like her normal self for the first time since this started. She grabbed a pencil and paper. “I’m going to list their names. I’m going to include short bios. I’m going to turn them back into people.”
“Great idea. How?”
“The papers may not list their names in the stories, but the obituaries will list their names. I can get enough information to look other places and see if a woman in the obits was one of the women killed.” Elle booted up her computer, silent for weeks. “Forgot to charge it. Can I borrow yours?”
“Sure.” Geoff wasn’t convinced it would do any good, but at least Elle was off the sofa and active again.
It took some time for Elle to collect all the names, and more names were added everyday. When she was finished…temporarily, since the shooters were still at large…she created a website and sent Tweets to her followers, asking them to send the link to all their friends, family, and enemies. “Especially enemies”, she said. “They might be the ones who most need to hear.”
Women around the world flocked to the website and left supportive comments. Others, mostly men but some women, left abusive comments. Elle followed and updated the website every day, determined to keep it going until the ridiculous law was repealed. The day the Supreme Court declared it was within the constitutional powers of the government to protect their citizens, she wept…and added seven new names and bios to her site.
Geoff heard the phone ringing from the conference room. He raced back to his office to take the call. He stood with the phone in his hand, unable to move or respond. Tony took the phone from him and guided him to the chair. “What happened?”
“The web…I’ve got to…go online.” Geoff booted up his computer and found Elle’s website. He helped her with the updates for two years, he knew how it worked. He added one name…Elle’s name. He included a glowing bio of her, not restricting himself to a few sentences. He composed two pages of her accomplishments and found the best picture of her. His hands almost froze on the keyboard, but he forced them to keep going. This was her legacy. The world would know her name.