It's been really tough to be a woman lately. Just kidding, it's always been tough to be a woman. But just in case anyone thought the patriarchy had lost even a tiny bit of its power, the election of Donald J. Trump happened.
Despite the horrible things Trump said about women during his campaign (and, like, his whole life), plenty of voters still thought he'd be the best choice for POTUS. And the patriarchy won again.
But instead of being defeated, women have used this moment to take a stand and take back some of our power. Millions of women made their voices heard during the Women's March in late January and we plan to show men (straight, cisgender men in particular) what life without women would be like next month.
AdvertisementADVERTISEMENT
There's no denying that Trump's election has brought women together, and filmmakers Kate Hopkins and Emily Kron show just how powerful that has been in their new video.
The video shows an obviously fictional world in which all cisgender women started their periods on Inauguration Day.
As the words of Donald Trump being sworn in as president playing in the background, the women in the video slowly start to realize that everyone has synced up and give each other knowing "you, too?" nods at work meetings and at the laundromat. It could be taken as a defeated moment, these women's bodies just gave up, but the video ends on a line of women dressed in white holding each other's blood-covered hands. This isn't a surrender, it's a war cry.
"We, like many other women, were brokenhearted by the news of this election," the filmmakers explained on YouTube. "It left us feeling sore and sad and terribly angry. But for us, defeat swiftly shifted and became inspiration. We decided to make art out of our broken heart, so to speak."
The video is "a symbol of the connective power that ties us together," they wrote.
It's worth saying that menstrual blood in this video is just a symbol. It isn't our periods that connect us as women, as that experience would exclude transgender women, women who are in menopause, and women who do not bleed for other reasons. But periods in this video symbolize women's experiences in Trump's America.
"It doesn’t matter who you are or where you come from or your chosen political leaning," the filmmakers say. "We are bound by our bodies and by nature. When one of us bleeds, we all bleed. And so, we embrace our union and fight for our oneness."