Rosita Sweetman: Maybe it’s time for one of those all-women strikes?

International Women's Day: From billionaires to politics and porn, the 'damn patriarchy has never been more powerful'. Is it time for a global women’s strike, asks Rosita Sweetman 

United States vice-president JD Vance, who believes liberal women are 'childless cat ladies'. Picture: AP

I’m on an intense Edna O‘Brien buzz at the moment, re-reading her autobiography, Country Girl and off for a second viewing of Sinead O’Shea’s documentary about her life, The Blue Road.

My current favourite quote from the Edna oeuvre is from her wonderful creation Baba, in Girls in Their Married Bliss: "The vote I thought means nothing to women. We should be armed." At the time (late 1960s), I scoffed. Women? Armed? Are you joking?

But 60-plus years after the societal revolution that was second-wave feminism, take a look around: the damn patriarchy has never been more powerful.

The current Lords of the Universe, frantically engineering a coup d’etat in the White House, include a sex-offending felon, a billionaire misogynist, and a Let’s Go Back to the Good Old Hillbilly Days, eye liner-wearing VP who thinks (out loud) that liberal women ‘are childless cat ladies’.

Oooof.

Things are no better in the wider world. We have a genocidal maniac in Tel Aviv hellbent on wiping out an entire population, particularly the women, the children, even the babies. Even — god help us — babies in incubators. What?

If that wasn’t enough to be going on with, there's another genocidal maniac lording it, with iron fist, over the largest landmass on earth and busy trying to gobble up his neighbour. No reason. He just wants more. Oh, and he can’t stand to see the Ukrainian people enjoying their democracy. Nyet.

Some days it feels while we were dressing up in pink and queuing to see Barbie the ‘big’ guys were silently amassing billions, catalogue shopping ever younger wives and creating a terrifying new technology designed to replace all humans, except the ones they can exploit.

Guests including Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai and Elon Musk, arrive before the 60th Presidential Inauguration in the Rotunda of the US Capitol in Washington on January 20.

The cute little reforms we’ve been begging for — 27% mandatory inclusion of women in CEO positions! 50% mandatory inclusion of women in politics! An end to pay discrimination! Contraception for all! — aren't even taken seriously, never mind implemented.

Meanwhile, what John Cleese termed "that appalling caricature of an arsehole" Donald Trump, screams: "Everybody wants a transgender op! That’s where all America’s money has gone!" Not to the billionaires busy gaming the system, building up fortunes via government grants? Elon Musk with his $447bn? Jeff Bezos with his $249bn? Mark Zuckerberg with his $224bn?

Don’t be silly. Of course not. No.

It would be laughable if it wasn’t so deadly. Particularly for us women. We were so sure we were changing the world but left the banks, the guns and the porn industry in male hands. What were we thinking?

Some stats from brilliant anti-porn campaigner, Professor Gail Dines.

Women perform 66% of the world’s work and produce 50% of the world’s food, but earn 10% of the world’s income.

Women own 1% of the world’s property.

Women comprise 70% of the world’s poor.

90% of the world’s billionaires are male.

And what about violent porn? Yes, porn. Doesn’t it strike anyone as weird that the filmed portrayal of violent sexual assaults against women for the pleasure of men is legitimate?

Imagine if it were dogs who were being simultaneously choked, beaten, vaginally and anally raped for the pleasure of human males, streamed into the smartphones of boys as young as 10, don’t you think there’d be an outcry? 

You can’t DO that to Fifi! It’s horrible! But somehow it’s okay because it’s women?

Second-wave feminists said porn was the scene of a crime. They were so right. To say that porn isn’t influencing the stratospheric rise in violent crimes against women is like saying food advertising doesn’t affect us.

Come on.

Actually those of us worried about the links between the far right, ‘theo bros’ and the billionaire ‘tech bros’, and what it means for women, were right to be concerned. Look at what’s happening. It seems we weren’t nearly concerned enough.

Take the past two weeks. Odious weirdo Andrew Tate and his human shield brother re-appeared in headlines after they were sprung from a Romanian jail and headed back to the US.

Andrew Tate is handcuffed to his brother Tristan Tate, during a court appearance in Bucharest, Romania.

Banged up on charges of sex trafficking, rape, fraud, tax avoidance, sex with a minor, forming a company with criminal intent, money laundering, tampering with witnesses, etc, the brothers were put on a private jet and flown to Florida. Some 72km north of Trump’s playground.

Trump "knew nothing about it". Nothing! Seized assets, swanky cars and properties all returned, the brothers, grinning like chipmunks, promised to return to Romania for their end of March hearing. Hahaha.

Next it was the Epstein files. You’ll remember Trump’s buddy Jeffrey Epstein, an absolute divil for raping underage girls, who, said Donald, was "a lot of fun to be with". "The most transparent administration in history" organised an all-funsies photo op to release ‘files full of nothing’ to ‘paid, partisan, social media influencers.’ Lovely.

The icing on the incel cake is going to be the pardoning of Ghislaine Maxwell. Yes, darling Ghislaine who groomed, then handed vulnerable underage girls to a monster, for years, is apparently up for a presidential pardon. Ah sure, why not?

Innocents abroad might think ‘Christians’ would be appalled. Apparently, not in the US. Too busy collaborating with the far right. Of course, there should be the death penalty for abortion! Let’s freak out about lives that haven’t started rather than bother with the actual living human beings facing oppression, destruction, famine, and genocide, all available to view online any time of your choice. And in the meantime make the cat ladies have more babies! Today! Now! We need more white people!

Maybe it’s time for one of those all-women strikes? Every woman out. 

No sex. No hot dinners. No laughing at your jokes until you lot grow up. Stop killing each other, and millions of us. Stop being so greedy. Stop pouring billions into either trying to go into space or trying to develop AI, a technology that is going to kill us all, if the sci-fi writers are correct (and they've been pretty spot on so far). 

We women like Mother Earth. We don’t want to go to dead bloody red desert Mars. We don’t want probes the size of camper vans on the moon. We like the Moon just as she is. We like our democracy too, imperfect as it is. We like our minds, we like our bodies, not perfect, but ours. They're what we feel, eat, love, make love, make babies, and care for each other with. Tech bros, theo bros, incels ... how about you lot go to Mars? And maybe consider staying there. 

I’m staying with Baba. Maybe we should have got the guns instead of the vote. And, imperfect as it is, International Women’s Day. 

Rosita Sweetman’s new memoir, ‘A Girl with a Fork in a World of Soup’ will be published this summer, by MENMA BOOKS, West Cork