Men can stop whining. Women aren't going back

By Francis Wilkinson

The US presidential election appears on track to produce more than 160 million votes. It’s a social, regional, cultural, ideological cacophony somehow channeled into a binary choice (unless you duck the contest by voting third-party). But with the election under way, I can’t help thinking about a woman who isn’t on a ballot, and who won’t vote in this election — a woman whose very existence is in jeopardy because politics went badly askew and took her dignity and freedom with it.

You can see her in a video, which surfaced in recent days, revealing her sitting next to a potted plant beside an outdoor stairway at Azad University in Tehran. It seems she took all she could take. Her clothes appear to be piled behind her. Dressed only in her underwear, without a mandatory hijab, she rises and walks, arms folded across her abdomen, pacing like a caged animal. Some passersby gawk, others pretend not to notice. Her uncovered hair flows nearly to her waist — an Iranian Rapunzel seeking to flee the tower in which the women of her land are captives.

Defiance in the theocratic state of Iran, especially by a woman, is an invitation to torture and death. A 22-year-old woman, Mahsa Amini, died in 2022 after being arrested by the morality police, allegedly for her insufficiently deferential approach to headgear. Many more have died in aborted attempts at freedom over the past decade and more. The state thugs eventually seized the half-naked woman in the video, as well, as she surely knew they would. I hope she survives. The Iranian government described her as “troubled,” which seems true enough.

But I hope also that we take the measure of her defiance and contrast it against the ceaseless whimpering that dominates so much US politics. Much of it has a misogynistic tenor that shouldn’t be readily dismissed.

Conservative men in the age of MAGA excel at whining about the terrible toll that democracy and pluralism have taken on their self-esteem. They demand public rebuke of women ranging from childless cat ladies to those with the temerity to complain about Donald Trump’s lifetime of alleged (and confirmed ) sexual assaults. The GOP wallows in misogyny; its base buys and sells it.

Meanwhile, MAGA demands preferential status in American culture and in the marketplace of ideas, where ignorance and malice are not ready winners. In his closing argument, Trump imagined Liz Cheney with nine guns in her face. He fantasized about diminutive Kamala Harris facing former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson. JD Vance, who seeks to recall a more chivalrous time, when men were men, called the vice president “trash.”

Tens of million American women have already lost their reproductive rights at the direction of Republican men. The consequences for some women have been fatal. Without a political intervention, more will suffer and die. For anyone who thought anti-abortion laws in Texas and elsewhere were truly about preserving life, Republican leaders openly mock your good faith. When the rights of a dead or unviable fetus are pitted against those of a live woman, it’s the living woman who loses. It turns out that people who celebrate executing criminals and drowning desperate migrants are not, in the main, greatly committed to the sanctity of human life. What theocrats and thugs want, whether in Tehran or Texas, is the power to repress.

This election may feature a historic gender gap. Men, feeling their elevated status at last eroding, have turned to MAGA to keep the future at bay. Women are, as one woman in particular keeps reminding us, not going back. The divide bodes ill for social harmony and the pursuit of happiness. But if men’s contentment depends on women’s subjugation, then the pursuit has already been fatally compromised. Something must give. If justice prevails, it won’t be women’s rights.

In Tehran, the struggle between freedom and thugocracy is a foregone conclusion. That’s why the underwear-clad woman is such a paragon of courage. She cannot win. But she demanded that the thugs recognize her power, and individuality, if only for as long as it takes to crush them.

In the US, women have been gaining power day by day, year by year, decade by decade. It won’t be easy to steal it back. Men are not helpless; most will adapt to a changing culture, as humans do. The future beckons. If you want to know the cost of turning back, a woman in Iran has made a very precise calculation.