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The politics of humiliation. It seems to keep groups of people down for awhile until they explode in anger and rebel and overthrow governments and cut kings’ heads off and set fire to cities. One group of people hasn’t yet erupted. That would be us, the ladies.

The Women’s March of 2017, January, the day after the inauguration, would be the closest thing I can identify with as an uprising against humiliation. And it was extremely polite, calm, and well-organized, just what you’d expect from an uprising of ladies. I was there, in my “pussy ears.” I was in a crowd so dense that no one could budge and had anyone created any kind of riot, we would have had crushings underfoot. But it didn’t happen.

And yet the politics of humiliation was palpable. The inauguration of a man who was so rude, dismissive, and dangerous to women that he would openly brag about it in an election campaign was enough to turn out millions of humiliated women.

I can’t explain why it hasn’t happened before. Women have been humiliated since God created Eve from Adam’s rib. Excuse me, God? Umm, I think it was the other way around.

Humiliation of women is baked into our language: girlie, sissy, bitch, hag, shrew, womanish, bimbo, hysterics, and so on. There are as many words to disparage males, but none of them are used to humiliate women, say, by calling them “mannish” or “tomboy.” In fact, it is now a compliment to say “She’s got balls.” He’s got boobs? Doesn’t mean anything, even though he does.

The politics of humiliation, which is getting a lot of analysis since said January inauguration, works extremely well for as long as it works. It keeps the sub-group from feeling empowered and respected. It self-reinforces by convincing the sub-group that the humiliation is valid. A colleague at work once confided to me that he was jealous of my French heritage. His heritage was Irish, and it embarrassed him. I was stunned, especially since I’d always heard lots of Frog jokes and “Excuse my French.” While those were slurs, they weren’t humiliating. For my co-worker, merely being Irish was humiliating to him.

The politics of humiliation is what’s enflaming the protests of police brutality across the country. Minorities have had it. It doesn’t matter whether the police are Black, or the Police Chief is Black, or the Mayor is Black, or the Attorney General is Black, or the President is Black. The politics of humiliation have to stop.

The politics of humiliation works until it doesn’t work. Trump ignited a firestorm of humiliated people, the so-called “non-degreed” people. And then in the midterm elections of 2018, another firestorm of humiliated people, women.

After approximately 5,000 years of humiliation politics (starting in the Bronze Age), I sense a sea change. I feel it in myself. After living 68 years being told what I was and what I wasn’t, I’m beginning to find my own words. I am not shorter, fatter, and stupider. I am compact, endowed, and smart-as-all-get-out.

I want to live four more years to see the first female President of the United States. Four years. Point Zero Eight Percent of the Age of Political Humiliation. I think we’re getting there.