With a moderate judge’s retirement, U.S. women’s rights are in peril

Now would be the perfect time to identify as a feminist

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement this week, a fact that under normal circumstances might not register as especially shocking. After all, the man is 81.

But these aren’t normal circumstances. These are Trumpian circumstances.

Kennedy is a moderate conservative and a swing vote on the Supreme Court. This month he voted to uphold President Donald Trump’s controversial travel ban, but he also voted to uphold abortion rights in the early 1990s, and in 2015 he wrote the ruling that legalized gay marriage nationwide.

In his absence it’s likely Trump will nominate a reliably right-wing replacement to the Supreme Court, tipping the scales in favour of conservative causes: Among them, restriction to abortion access.

American activists warn that the overturning of Roe V. Wade is imminent, not to mention the scaling-back of various other hard-won civil rights.

Here’s Jim Obergefell, the lead plaintiff in the landmark same-sex marriage case of 2015, writing in Time magazine this week: “I struggle to understand how Justice Kennedy can look at our current environment and retire, knowing that his legacy of compassion and dignity, not to mention the civil rights of millions of people, are in serious risk.”

That’s some seriously heavy stuff to put on a guy when he’s getting ready to live out his days on a golf course, but it isn’t unwarranted.

For the first time, frenzied comparisons of American politics to Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” aren’t completely insane.

The question is what will American women do?

Feminist debates that have consumed our media these last few years are mostly theoretical and dare I say it, low stakes.

“Does this Marvel movie have enough female superheroes in it? Can white feminists speak to black issues? Are men pulling their weight with the housework? Is it feminist to go to work without makeup?”

It’s not that these questions aren’t interesting and important (they certainly are), but it’s also fair to say they aren’t particularly galvanizing for many women unversed in feminist activism.

They are also, ironically, at least partially responsible for the aversion some women have to identifying as feminist.

According to a YouGov poll from 2016, less than a third of women identify as feminists.

When asked why they rejected the label, 40 per cent of respondents of both genders said feminists are “too extreme.”

I know people like this. I used to be one. In their minds feminism should be — to borrow the motto of The Revolution, a 19th-century newspaper co-founded by American suffragette Susan B. Anthony — “Men their rights and nothing more; women their rights and nothing less.”

Everything else — debates about Hollywood representation and body positivity — is to many a colossal waste of time. But the possibility that abortion may be outlawed? That isn’t a waste of time.

That isn’t a “fringe issue” or a distraction. If you’re an American woman, it’s a direct threat to your way of life. And that threat is around the corner.

Kennedy’s retirement in the Trump era marks the first time in a long time that women’s rights in the U.S. are in serious, overwhelming peril.

Now would be a great time for any woman on the fence about identifying as a feminist to cast aside her differences with the activists at the helm of the women’s movement, and wear the label with pride — not in the service of a hashtag or an idea, but in the service of basic, fundamental freedoms.

This isn’t a “fringe issue” or a distraction. If you’re an American woman, it’s a direct threat to your way of life.