The Superhero Bulletin #4
Women Are Fighting Men. We Should.
5 News Stories I'm Following This Week
- Kamala Harris Won The U.S. Presidential Debate: With a lot of policy on the Democratic side and anti-immigrant rhetoric on the right-wing (infamously including the false allegation that Haitian immigrants are eating cats and dogs), the elections are heating up. Also, Taylor Swift endorsed Kamala Harris, resulting in over 300,000 Americans going to sign up to vote. Later in the week, Donald Trump faced another assassination attempt from a conservative white man.
- Central Europe is dealing with deadly floods. Flooding in Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania, and Austria have left at least 21 people dead. Italy, Croatia, Hungary, and Slovakia are next to face the storm.
- World war? Ukraine’s drone attack at a Russian ammo depot triggered intense explosions. The blasts were picked up by NASA satellites and earthquake monitors. Russia has been firing missiles at Ukrainian targets including schools, hospitals, and apartments. Ukraine has limited strikes to military targets in Russia. And President Zelenskyy is pushing the U.S. to lift restrictions on using long-range Western weapons to strike further into Russia. (Russia warns this would be a war with the West.)
- World war? In Lebanon, 8 people were killed and 2700 injured in simultaneous explosions. Hezbollah says pagers belonging to its members exploded and blames Israel. Israel has not taken credit. Meanwhile Israel continues to bomb Gaza, including safe zones and civilian areas. Worries are flaring about an all-out war between Israel and Lebanon. In 2006, the last Israel and Lebanon war left a wake of death, destruction, and flimsy peace.
- A Swiss model’s violent murder was the latest in a string of high-profile, international cases of violence to women. Gisèle Pelicot, a French grandmother, was drugged by her husband and raped/sexually assaulted by over 80 men for a decade. In Kenya, Olympian Rebecca Cheptegei died after she was doused in petrol and set on fire by her ex-boyfriend. And Indian doctor, Moumita Debnath was violently tortured, gang raped, and murdered at her college, sparking international protests.
The Big Thought: Women are fighting men around the world. Will it be enough?
The 4B movement in Korea is telling women to say no.
No sex with men.
No giving birth.
No dating men.
And no marriage with men.
It’s a response to South Korea’s patriarchal state, pro-natalist policies, and conservative culture. A 2022 survey showed that 65% of women did not want children, largely because of expectations they’d have to care for the children and the elderly at the expense of their own lives and careers.
It has now spread to the rest of the world on social media. On TikTok, women encourage each other to not settle for men unless they pay for everything, from housing to expensive gifts. That’s the price, they say, to have a wife who will risk her life to birth your children. Of a wife expected to do the majority of housework and emotional labor.
From the United States where women are fighting against forced birth to Afghanistan, where women are fighting for a basic education, women are fighting hard.
Meanwhile, villains like Andrew Tate or the perpetrators of the heinous domestic violence and rape cases we see growing worldwide are teaching boys that girls are not equal and do not have inherent value.
So the trend among women to prioritize ourselves, each other, and the success of womanhood seems obvious.
Now that we are allowed to own homes, vote, have money, and make decisions for our own lives — at least in much of the world — we are making that choice: Freedom over men.
But at no time in my life have I felt the “battle between the sexes” to be so powerful as today. Across the world, there is a wide gender gap between overwhelmingly liberal women and conservative men — from as young as middle school.
For someone who hoped we’d do away with gender norms altogether (there are other genders, after all), this is especially tragic.
I worry, thus, about a rise in gender-based violence, incel rage, and domestic abuse from men. I worry about the continued structures of patriarchy undoing hard-fought wins as they recognize a loss of power: from the overturning of Roe vs. Wade in the U.S. to a continued reduction of fundamental rights in Iran and Afghanistan.
The majority of the fighters for gender equality and women’s rights are women. The majority of us who speak out about it on social media are women.
I want GenZ to be the last generation of women that lives in the fear we do. The last generation where the majority of us have faced violence at the hands of men.
And so we fight.
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Isvari Maranwe
CEO of Yuvoice
Award-Winning Cyber & Tech Attorney | Political Analyst & Writer
Follow me on LinkedIn and TikTok. I help you analyze and stay informed on politics, culture, and the world.
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