Lin-Manuel Brings His Son To The Women’s March

Drum roll, please. And the award for the best father in the Twitterverse goes to... the creator of Hamilton. From the looks of things on social media, Lin-Manuel Miranda and his son are at the Women's March in London, and it's basically as adorable as you can imagine. Do you think Miranda will adopt you? No shade intended to your parents, but you probably kind of hope so.

Miranda showed his son Sebastian getting warmed up for the march via a tape-recording of him saying, "Good morning, womens." This was shortly followed by a photo of his son from behind blowing bubbles at what looks like the supremely fun London edition of the global message of resistance. Obviously this are some feel-good tweets, but they suggest something important: that Miranda is bringing up his son in the best way possible. It implies that Miranda is emphasizing the importance of being an ally to his son, the necessity of respecting women and their boundaries, and the power of peaceful political activism. Sebastian is just 2 years old. Imagine what sort of adult he's going to turn into with messages like this at the forefront of his upbringing. Here's a guess: a pretty damn awesome one.

Plenty of arguments have been made for the importance of men being at the Women's March, too, most neatly summarized in Anna March's statement over at Salon: "all progressives — not just female ones — should come together as active, intersectional feminists to fight President-elect Donald Trump and the enormous threats he poses to justice for all marginalized groups."

And as with any movement, it's a number's game: The more people there, the more politicians will feel impassioned to hold Donald Trump accountable. So hats off to Miranda for recognizing that and bringing his son, too.

Even if you believe that the march should purely be about women's rights rather than on a broader focus on collective injustices directed toward vulnerable minorities of all genders, I'd argue men should still be there, because of the oft-repeated phrase, "Women's rights are human rights." While it's important for women to band together, it's also important that all of our society, no matter the gender, recognizes that they should be fighting to support women on the issues that affect them, even if those same issues don't make any difference to their daily life.

As Rebecca Solnit has argued in "Feminism: The Men Arrive!", on a purely practical basis, it's tougher for misogyny to survive in a world in which men are feminists, too. She wrote,

For one thing, the men who hate and despise women will be changed, if they change, by a culture in which doing horrible things to, or saying horrible things about, women will undermine rather than enhance a man’s standing with other men.

As such, it's great to see two generations of Miranda men fighting for women's rights — and human rights — at the Women's March. So three cheers for Lin-Manuel Miranda — not just a musical genius and one of the nicest humans on Twitter, but also a seriously great dad.