Trump hasn’t changed. Women have

Alittle over a year ago, I traveled by bus with 100 other women (and a handful of brave men) from New Mexico to the Women’s March in Washington, D.C.

One of the spectacles that struck me, as the D.C. streets filled with pink-clad women resembling a sea of surging Pepto-Bismol, were hundreds of padlocked portable toilets labeled “Don’s Johns.” It was emblematic of the patriarchal attitude toward women and people of color who dared to demand justice.

If we wanted to march, we had to hold the contents of our bladders.

In the past year, as President Donald Trump has grown even more vile, women and people of color have found their voices.

My generation of women was the first expected to work outside the home. Most experienced harassment, assault or rape. When I was young there was little that could be done. Fighting back made it worse. If you wanted or needed a career, you kept your mouth shut.

Trump has performed one useful function for women. He embodies the Jungian archetype of the fool, acting out every aspect of our national shadow, putting himself forward so we can see and viscerally reject what we most abhor: dictatorship, racism, vulgarity, dishonesty, bullying, misogyny and hypocrisy.

Hannah Arendt stated that violence is the opposite of power. Power arises

from legitimacy, consensus and shared experience. The more we speak out and resist bullying, the more we give voice to our lived experience, the more power we bring to our democracy.

Trump hasn’t changed. Women have. Where so many men in power have cowered at the advance of Trump’s fascism, women have broken the padlocks on Don’s Johns. We’ll continue to give voice to our shared experience, and we will elect individuals to office who are both capable of and deserving of respect.