Pussy Grabs Back: Bestialized Sexual Politics and Intersectional Failure in Protest Posters for the 2017 Women’s March

The women’s march on Washington on January 21 2017 and its more

than 600 sister marches across the world was characterized by its

distinctly feline theme. Most notable were the pink pussy hats and a

multitude of signs that played on the historical association between

women and cats to resist the crude remarks made by US presidential

nominee Donald Trump who bragged of grabbing women “by

the pussy.” This article explores this feline counterframing from a

vegan feminist perspective. A content analysis was performed on

photographs that were published in Why I March (2017) and uploaded

to the Women’s March on Washington Archives Project, the Georgia

State University Women’s Marches 2017 Collection, and Instagram in

Spring 2017. Results illustrate the persistent role that animality plays

in feminist politics, but they also point to a critical intersectional failure

exhibited by an ultimately anthropocentric collective.