Conversation

So it’s the 2nd annual women’s march. In 2017 it flooded all media. This year barely a ripple. And I see it’s dissolved into internecine controversy about hats and a why-isn’t-it-bigger story about Trump’s magazine spanking. There’s a lesson here, but damned if I know what it is
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It’s really not news if its just a rerun with no new message to the movement, I don’t blame them. It’s not seeking sensationalism so much as a bare reason to cover. If bickering over a cap symbol can swamp any larger message that might have been there, not a good sign
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I think the narrative here is fundamentally weaker. There is a central character (“woman”) and an energy (which shows up as takedowns of specific men, like Weinstein, or institutions), but no overall plot. The Tea Party had a story (constitutional originalism initially).
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And note, to take the NYT as an example, there’s been endless op-eds, exposes, coverage. The only thing missing has been a grand narrative. Without that, there’s no way to trace diff between the 2017 and 2018 other than stats of number of women running, number of men taken down
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In the absence of a natural story, the only thing people can do is keep some sort of score. Men taken down, seats won in Congress under a banner. #Occupy had the same problem. It’s why “movements” on the Left generally gain less traction than on the Right. Cf. Lakoff model
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It would work if it were about an ethnic minority confined to a lower economic class. A story that’s about half the species, and one that spans all the classes, has to be bigger. “The patriarchy” is a story that, whether you like it or not, is at the right scale.