I’ve been going to some protests in recent years. I guess since the big Women’s March at the start of 2017… a march to protest the abomination which is the presidency of the Trumpster monster. The feeling at that march was solidarity, hope, anger… a coming together to say WTF is happening to our world.

Since then I’ve been to marches for women’s rights, refugee rights, pro choice, keep Sydney open and the beautiful marriage equality rally in 2017. I haven’t marched this much since the anti nuclear marches back in the early 1980s.

I don’t know if marching, protesting achieves anything but I am so angered and saddened by what is happening in our world that I need to express it. The reality for me is I’m a privileged, white, middle class woman. I’m educated, I own property, I have a pretty bloody good life. But I’m watching governments in this country and overseas doing shit things to people who have already had a shit tonne of shit things done to them (the gay community, refugees, racial minorities, women needing abortions… to name a few) and I’m fucking pissed off. (I may have just exceeded the legal limit of the word “shit” in a sentence.)

For one thing my privilege is a combination of luck (mine) and hard work (my parents’). They got me out of the wreck known as the Ukraine and via a series of twists and turns we ended up in Oz and our lives have been pretty damn good since 1976 when we arrived. Every day I think about how lucky I am to have the life I have and how that luck has nothing whatsoever to do with my own intelligence, abilities, work ethic or any other personal attribute. Just dumb luck. Which means that I could just as easily not have that luck and be one of the people so demonised by politicians and society.

We are currently living through an upswing in conservative, right wing ideology. The Trumps and the ScoMos didn’t pop up out of a vacuum… they crawled out of the murky swamps created by fear and uncertainty. I could write thousands of words on that topic. Let me just say I despise politicians who feed that fear and uncertainty in the community and present themselves as having easy solutions; more so I hate them for creating scapegoats and for pointing fingers. The scapegoats are usually the people most in need of societal care and protection, the vulnerable and disadvantaged. But it’s much easier to say that the refugee is coming for your job or is a secret terrorist than to say you can’t fix the economy because we’ve all sold out to corporate greed and the myth of trickle down economics; it’s easier to hark back to an imaginary golden age of family bliss and harmony and blame the LGBTQ community for destroying “family values” than to deal with the reality of complex human and family needs.

What I’m really afraid of, in a nutshell, right now is that we are being puppet-mastered and “governed” by people like ScoMo who believe that they represent their imaginary friend in the sky above and beyond the fact that they represent living, breathing human beings who actually fucking voted for him. That is the crux of the problem with god botherers – they are more interested in the afterlife than in the real life; more interested in their imaginary friend than in the needs of the actual people around them. The fact that people who call themselves Christians (and therefore are supposedly walking in the footsteps of Jesus Christ… I’m no biblical scholar, correct me if I’m wrong) can vote for human garbage like Donald Trump, can demonise the most needy, can protest against abortion while unapologetically doing nothing for actual children when they are no longer sacred fetuses…. well, the hypocrisy of these people is astounding, diabolical even. They are the polar opposite of what they represent themselves to be.

I’ve really wondered off track here. I guess I’m trying to explain why I’m pissed off and why I’ve been going to quite a few marches lately. I guess I need to stand with like minded people and say “I’m mad as hell and I fucking don’t want to take this shit anymore”. I’m using my privilege to march for those who can’t; I guess that’s the bottom line.

On Saturday I’m taking Miss M to the pro choice rally in Sydney, a rally in support of the legislation currently before the state parliament to decriminalise abortion in NSW. We are the last state in this country to still criminalise abortion. Can you believe that shit? It’s been horrifying to watch the god bothering nutters writhe and scream and lie about what it will mean when abortion is decriminalised. You know what it’ll mean? NOTHING. Abortions will continue like they have since women first figured out how to get rid of unwanted pregnancies, through poison, or coat hangers, or back yard abortionists… but they will continue safely and without the bullshit and the morality and the slut shaming and the women shaming and the god invoking nonsense. Women will be able to have abortions without the fear of a criminal prosecution and doctors will be able to perform abortions without fear of same. A no brainer for a civilized, just, compassionate society.