# The pink protest at Trump’s speech shows the Democrats aren’t coming to save us

## The Week in Patriarchy

## Democrats

The general reaction is that this was yet another stunning example of how spineless and performative the Democrats are.

## Sat 8 Mar 2025 09.00 EST

Last modified on Mon 10 Mar 2025 09.37 EDT

## Happy International Women’s Day (IWD), everyone! I’ve got some good news and some bad news to mark the occasion.

The bad news is that a  is leading the most powerful country on earth and we’re seeing a  against women’s rights. “\nstead of mainstreaming equal rights, we are seeing the mainstreaming of misogyny,” the UN , said in his IWD message.

The good news, for those of us in the US at least, is that the Democrats have a plan to deal with all this. Or rather, they have wardrobe . On Tuesday night,  addressed a joint session of Congress at the US Capitol. Some members from the Democratic Women’s Caucus (DWC), including Nancy Pelosi, decided to protest by … wait for it … wearing pink.

“Pink is a color of power and protest,” the New Mexico representative Teresa Leger Fernández, the chair of the DWC, . “It’s time to rev up the opposition and come at Trump loud and clear.”

The pink outfits may have been loud but the message the  were sending was far from clear. They couldn’t even coordinate their colour-coordinating protest: some lawmakers turned up wearing pink while others wore blue and yellow to support Ukraine and others wore black because it was a somber occasion.

Still, I’ll give the DWC their due: their embarrassing stunt seems to have garnered at least one – possibly two – fans. One , for example, wrote that the “embrace of such a traditionally feminine color \ by women with considerable political power makes a stunning example of subversive dressing”.

For the most part, however, the general reaction appears to have been that this was yet another stunning example of how spineless and performative the Democrats are. Forget bringing a knife to a gunfight – these people are bringing pink blazers to a fight for democracy. To be fair, there were a few other attempts at protest beyond a pink palette: the Texas representative Al Green  (and was later  by some of his colleagues for doing so) and a few Democrats left the room during Trump’s speech. Still, if this is the “opposition”, then we are all doomed.

Not to mention: even the pink blazers seemed a little too extreme for certain factions of the Democratic party. House Democratic leadership  members not to mount protests and to show restraint during Trump’s address. They also chose the Michigan senator Elissa Slotkin to give the Democratic response to Trump’s speech. While Slotkin tends to be described as a  by a lot of the media, she’s very Trump-adjacent. Slotkin is one of the Democratic senators who has  the most often and, last June, was one of the 42 Democrats to vote with the GOP to sanction the international criminal court (ICC) over its seeking of arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli . Human rights advocacy groups have warned that attacking the ICC like this undermines international law and the ability to prosecute or prevent human rights violations across the world. It speaks volumes about the US media and political class that a senator standing against international law can be called a centrist.

This whole episode also speaks volumes about the Democrats’ plan for the future: it’s growing increasingly clear that, instead of actually growing a spine and fighting to improve people’s lives, the Democratic party seems to think the smartest thing to do is quietly move to the right and do nothing while the Trump administration . I won’t caution against this strategy myself. Instead, I’ll let Harry Truman do it. Back in 1952, : “The people don’t want a phony Democrat. If it’s a choice between a genuine Republican, and a Republican in Democratic clothing, the people will choose the genuine article, every time.”

Anyway, the upshot of all of this is that the Democrats are not coming to save us. We must save ourselves. That means organizing within our local communities and learning lessons from activists . It means being careful not to normalize creeping authoritarianism and it means recognizing the urgency of the moment. The warning signs are flashing red: we need to respond with a hell of a lot more than a pink wardrobe.

## Make atomic bombings straight again!

DEI Derangement Syndrome has reached such a fever pitch in the US that a picture of the Enola Gay aircraft that dropped an atomic bomb on Japan has been  at the Pentagon. Apparently, it only got the job because it was Gay.

## Can a clitoris be trained to read braille?

The Vagina Museum addressed this .

## One in eight women killed by men in the UK are over 70

A  by the Femicide Census looks at the deaths of 2,000 women killed by men in the UK over the last 15 years and found that the abuse of older women hasn’t had as much attention as it should. “We have to ask why we see the use of sexual and sustained violence against elderly women who are unknown to the much younger men who kill them,” the co-founder of the Femicide Census . “The misogynistic intent in these killings is clear.”

After being assaulted at age 22, Nguyen got a  for her rape kit and all the tests and medication that went along with it. She was also informed that it was standard practice for her rape kit to be destroyed after six months. “The statute of limitations is 15 years because it recognises that trauma takes time to process,”  in an interview. “It allows a victim to revisit that justice. But destroying the rape kit after six months prevents a survivor from being able to access vital evidence.” After her traumatic experience, Nguyen successfully fought for the right not to have your rape kit destroyed until the statute of limitations has expired, and the right not to have to pay for it to be carried out.

## Female doctors outnumber male peers in UK for first time

It’s a  in what has traditionally been a male-dominated profession.

## There’s an Israeli TikTok trend mocking the suffering of Palestinian children

This is one of  that would be front page of the New York Times if it were directed at Israelis but is getting relatively little  because of how normalized the dehumanization of Palestinians is. It’s also just  in a series of social media trends mocking Palestinian suffering.

## Florida opens criminal investigation into Tate brothers

“These guys have themselves publicly admitted to participating in what very much appears to be soliciting, trafficking, preying upon women around the world,” the  said.

## The week in pawtriarchy

Jane Fonda, a , has always fought the good fight. But she’s also apparently fought wildlife. The actor’s son recently told a Netflix podcast that Fonda once “pushed a bear out of her bedroom”. While that phrase may mean different things to different people, in this instance it was quite literal. Fonda apparently scared off a bear who had entered her grandson’s room and was sniffing the crib. Too bad nobody was there to snap a photo of the escapade – it would have been a real Kodiak moment.

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