Remembering the Ladies: “Quiet, Piggy.”
by Jennifer Ring
“I desire you would Remember the Ladies….Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could.”
Abigail Adams to John Adams, March 31, 1776
“Quiet, piggy!”
President Donald J. Trump to Catherine Lucey, of Bloomberg News on Air Force One, November 14, 2025
The first lines of Abigail Adams’ letter to her husband are familiar to many Americans. Less well known is the rest of the letter, which raises the threat of a women’s rebellion if the authors of the Declaration of Independence do not include “the ladies” in the new government:
“I long to hear that you have declared an independency -- and by the way in the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.
That your Sex are Naturally Tyrannical is a Truth so thoroughly established as to admit of no dispute, but such of you as wish to be happy willingly give up the harsh title of Master for the more tender and endearing one of Friend. Why then, not put it out of the power of the vicious…”
This is strong stuff! Abigail Adams expresses eagerness for independence from England, anticipates a new code of laws, reminds her husband John of how abusive men are inclined to be, and vows that American women will not be a part of the new nation if their interests are not represented. No taxation without representation goes for women as well as men.
I don’t know whether John responded personally to his wife on this matter, but there is no mention of women in either the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution of 1787. The word “male” first appeared in the constitution in 1869 in the text of the Fifteenth Amendment, which extended voting rights to formerly enslaved men, but not women. No American women of any race could vote until 1920, a century and a half after Abigail Adams made her request to her husband, who was destined to be the first Vice President and the second President of the United States.
Although the second First Lady of the United States was an eighteenth-century feminist, the nation has not treated its women well. Donald Trump said the quiet part out loud when he silenced a female reporter on Air Force One with “Quiet, Piggy.”[1]
The history of our country is a story of women with very little power battling for two and a half centuries for basic democratic rights: to vote, to hold property in their own name, to work for a salary equal to men doing the same work, to keep their earnings, to control their reproductive decisions, and to be protected from sexual violence. Now the MAGA regime is stripping women of the right to make decisions about their reproductive health and sexual choices, firing them from powerful positions in the military, academia, and public service, and even talking about repealing women’s suffrage![2] Rights that American women have won over the past two centuries are threatened, while their history, along with the history of Black and LGBTQ Americans, is being erased from public institutions, schools and universities in Trump’s war on “DEI.”
Rachel Louise Snyder in The New York Times Opinion page, November 23, 2025 notes that recent developments are part of a bigger picture of ongoing American mistreatment of women: “The [Epstein] emails are just a piece of the larger story: the lengths this country and the systems we’ve created will go to maintain the power of men at the expense of women’s bodies…The #MeToo movement…fed a colossal backlash that reminds us how our country has never adequately protected women.” Snyder adds, “Are you as angry as I am yet?”[3]
Silencing and controlling women has a long history in the United States. In the 1830’s sisters Angelina and Sarah Grimke from South Carolina were celebrity speakers and anti-slavery activists in the North. For the offense of having a large audience they were chastised in a public letter from the New England Clergy, reminding them that the proper role for women is to remain silent and dependent:
“The appropriate duties and influence of women are clearly stated in the New Testament. Those duties and that influence are unobtrusive and private….The power of woman is her dependence, flowing from the consciousness of that weakness which God has given her for her protection….But when she assumes the place and tone of man as a public reformer…she yields the power which God has given her for her protection, and her character becomes unnatural.”[4]
“Quiet, piggy!” was the underlying message, but the clergy’s attempt to shame the sisters didn’t work: The Grimkes responded by adding the rights of both Black and White women to their fight against slavery.
American women first specifically demanded the right to vote in July, 1848 at a women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York. It was the first time an organized movement arose advocating women’s suffrage. But the women agreed to put the campaign on hold during the Civil War.
A half century passed and women still lacked the right to vote. In 1913 a new generation of young radical feminists, led by Alice Paul, held a women’s suffrage parade in Washington D.C. on the same day as Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration. Their intention was to siphon public attention away from Wilson’s inauguration, which they did. But their parade turned into a riot when a mob of men and boys attacked the women and disrupted the march while the police who were there to keep order looked the other way.
In 1917 the United States entered World War I and Alice Paul had the audacity to lead her party to picket the White House, demanding votes. Again, the expectation was that women would not detract from the war effort by clamoring to vote. The women picketing at the gate of the White House were called traitors, spat upon, attacked by bystanders, arrested, and sentenced to ten months in a workhouse in Virginia on a phony charge (“Blocking traffic.”). While in jail Paul went on a hunger strike and was violently force-fed. When word of Paul’s brutal treatment made international headlines Wilson was shamed. It was difficult to sell America’s war to “save the world for democracy” when half the nation could not vote.
In 1920 the Nineteenth Amendment finally passed, giving American women voting rights. It had been nearly a century and a half since Abigail Adams demanded inclusion in American government. American women had persevered with virtually no political or economic power of their own, until they finally leveraged that foothold in American democracy.
World War II, like the wars before it, had impact on women’s role in the nation. While American men were overseas fighting, working- and middle-class women were recruited to factories, to manufacture battleships, planes and ammunition. They quickly learned how to do dangerous physical work, previously regarded as “men’s work” only. When the war ended and the men came home, the women workers were laid off and “sent home” with the message that their “natural” role was wife, mother and homemaker. But staying at home was never an option for working class women. The loss of that skilled factory work was a financial and a psychological blow for them.
Their middle-class sisters who were able to stay home were portrayed in mass media as the American ideal: fulfilled by a life of domesticity, devoted to their husbands, children, and suburban homes. This fantasy life only applied to the small percentage of heterosexual white women who could rely on a husband to support them in newly constructed suburbs. Racist housing policies (“redlining”) segregated people of color into urban centers. Racist hiring practices kept people of color, whether male or female, from access to jobs that would have enabled them to buy a house and be the sole support of a family in suburbia. And working class women of all races had to work.
Many of the ‘fifties “trad wives” were not satisfied with domestic bliss. When they expressed discontent, they were diagnosed as “neurotics,” sent to psychiatrists, and prescribed sedatives such as Valium. In the 1960’s and 1970’s their daughters (perhaps sensing their mothers’ discontent) joined the Civil Rights movement and the anti-Vietnam War movement, and from their political activism emerged the “second wave” of feminism: the “Women’s Liberation” movement. Their achievements are now being attacked by the MAGA crowd, who are worried about a “crisis in American manhood” and urging a return to “natural” submissive sex-segregated roles for girls and women.
“Quiet, Piggy” may have been what previous generations of Americans were thinking when women demanded respect, equal rights and physical safety, but until the present there has not been an American president vicious and vulgar enough to say it out loud. Donald Trump’s aggressive disregard for women has enabled America’s bedrock misogyny to resurface publicly.[5]
Still, Trump’s verbal assaults keep fading from public consciousness when overshadowed by his more visible material crimes. Telling women journalists that they’re “horrible,” “terrible,” “obnoxious,” “ugly,” “stupid,” and that their questions as journalists are “insubordinate,” seems less harmful than calling for the execution of six elected members of Congress who reminded members of the military that the Uniform Code of Military Justice requires them not to obey illegal orders. Insulting and disempowering women seems a less urgent matter than ordering the violent kidnapping and deportation of people of Latin American descent living in American cities. Publicly disrespecting women seems less egregious than referring to Somali immigrants, most of whom are American citizens and long-term residents, as “garbage,” and sending ICE agents in to remove them from the country. Or calling Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar “garbage,” and telling her to go back to Somalia (Representative Omar is an American citizen.) These are dangerous and lawless offenses from the president. But they shouldn’t eclipse a response to what Trump is doing to American women.
Jennifer Weiner in The New York Times, (December 28, 2025) wonders why male reporters haven’t stood up for their colleagues: “When he’s not busy tearing down the East Wing of the White House, our fearless leader has been tearing down female reporters, calling them ‘stupid,’ ‘obnoxious,’ ‘ugly’ and worse. His insults are bad. The absolute lack of any consequences is worse. And the failure of the rest of the press corps to stand up for their colleagues and take him to task – or even just repeat the female journalist’s question until he answers? That’s the worst of all.”[6]
However, something new may be happening. An awakening of public outrage about a “women’s issue” is proving difficult for Trump and his cronies to suppress. News won’t go away about Jeffrey Epstein’s organized sex trafficking of young girls to rich and powerful men. As outrage at Epstein’s sex crimes refuses to fade, we see Trump attempting a diversionary tactic: he launches a war against Venezuela to protect “national security.”
Like so many other times throughout American history, war is expected to take priority over all other “less important” issues, always sidelining issues centered on women. As Donald Trump and “War Secretary” Pete Hegseth prepare to invade Venezuela, their priority is transparent: “national security” requires a reassertion of American masculinity.
The president and war secretary assembled an audience of (mostly male) generals and admirals in Quantico, Virginia, on September 30, 2025 and lectured them about masculinity. The former weekend television news host told the highest ranking officers in the United States that their military is failing because of an excess of “social justice garbage,” which has allowed women and people of color to contaminate their ranks. Hegseth boasted that the Trump administration is ridding the military of social justice:
“This administration has done a great deal from day one to remove the social justice, politically correct, and toxic ideological garbage that had infected our department…. No more identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses. No more climate change worship. No more…gender delusions.”
“Gender delusions” is code for the misconception that any woman will ever be strong enough to qualify for combat duty:
“Today, at my direction, each service will ensure that every requirement for every designated combat arms position returns to the highest male standard only.”
Allowing women in combat, declared Hegseth, has resulted in a decline in the fighting strength of the American military, and confusion among the ranks about who is male and who is female:
“An entire generation of generals and admirals were told that they must parrot the insane fallacy that ‘our diversity is our strength’…. They had to put out dizzying DEI and LGBTQI+ statements. They were told females and males are the same thing, or that males who think they’re females is totally normal…”
The “entire generation” included the generals and admirals seated before him. Hegseth had the audacity to lecture the leaders of the most powerful military in the world about how to avoid dangerous “gender confusion” that may lose wars.
“We have to be prepared for war, not for defense. We’re training warriors, not defenders. We fight wars to win, not to defend…We fight to win. We unleash overwhelming and punishing violence on the enemy….We also don’t fight with stupid rules of engagement. We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill the enemies of our country. No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement, just common sense, maximum lethality and authority for warfighters.”
His insults included a judgment of the bodies of the military leadership: “It’s completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon. It’s a bad look.” [7]
Trump and Hegseth’s version of a “good look” for men is Conan the Barbarian, while a “good look” for women seems to be Barbie. Christine Embra describes what she calls “the Mar-a-Lago look”: “Fake eye-lashes, unsubtle fillers, blinding veneers and enough hair extensions to style a horse. It’s the style of a decadent court, meant to appeal to exactly one person.”[8]
Perhaps this time the American public won’t be bamboozled by the smokescreen of war to hide the mistreatment of women. Perhaps “national security” will be understood to include the safety of American girls and women. Perhaps the best way to protect women is not to disarm them, but to train them for combat if that’s what they desire.
It’s a new year. It’s time for American men and women together, side by side, to resist the denigration of women, and to stop associating masculinity with lawless violence. As we celebrate 250 years of being a nation, we should remember Abigail Adams’ overlooked request to remember the ladies. It will provide an infusion of health for our ailing democracy.
[1] On Air Force One on November 14, 2025, Trump cut off Catherine Lucey, a reporter for Bloomberg News, when she tried to ask why he had not yet released the Epstein files. “Quiet!” the president said. “Quiet, Piggy.”
[2] The unimaginable has a way of becoming real in Trump’s America. Republicans would not have to repeal the Nineteenth Amendment to keep women from voting. Requiring Voter ID would disenfranchise women who are married if their married name does not match the name on their birth certificate. This would also disenfranchise trans people whose gender ID does not match the gender on their birth certificate.
[3] Rachel Lousie Snyder, “The Real Epstein Cover-Up.” https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/22/opinion/epstein-women-feminist-rage.html
[4] Eleanor Flexner, Century of Struggle: The Woman’s Rights Movement in the United States, The Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press. Cambridge, MA. 1996. 42, 43.
[5] At a meeting in the Oval Office on November 18, 2025, reporter Mary Bruce of ABC news asked Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) a question about his knowledge of the gruesome murder under his rule, of Washington Post reporter Jamal Kashoggi. Trump berated her for daring to question the accused murderer of an American journalist: “You’re a terrible person. You should go back to school and learn how to be a reporter. You start off with a man who is highly respected, asking him a horrible, insubordinate, and just a terrible question.” (Reported by Brian Stelter, CNN Business, November 18, 2025)
On Air Force One on November 14, 2025, he cut off Catherine Lucey, a reporter for Bloomberg News, when she tried to ask why he had not yet released the Epstein files. “Quiet!” the president said. “Quiet, piggy.”
On December 8, he berated ABC’s Rachel Scott when she asked him a question he didn’t like: “You are obnoxious. Just are terrible reporter.” On November 27 he asked a female reporter in the White House Press Corps, “Are you stupid? Are you a stupid person?” (Reported by Molly Jong-Fast on MS NOW.)
[6] Jennifer Weiner, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/27/opinion/the-year-in-lists.html
[7] Transcript. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth Addresses General and Flag Officers at Quantico, Virginia. September 30, 2025 https://www.war.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/4318689/secretary-of-war-pete-hegseth-addresses-general-and-flag-officers-at-quantico-v/
[8] Christine Embra https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/27/opinion/the-year-in-lists.html