Every now and then I stumble across someone who seems to legitimately not care about women's rights. I can ALMOST see how an uninformed type male wouldn't understand the struggle and pressures of being born a female (or a male that identifies as female), but what really gets me is when a woman doesn't care. I understand that feminism is MY passion, but how could any woman truly feel unaffected by the women's movement? How could any female not feel ecstatically proud of how far we've come? The only answer I can conceive is that we have done our job. If a young girl has truly never felt discriminated against, looked down on, treated as lesser or dumber or weaker, then thank the goddesses that all of their hard work has paid off! For those of you who are unaffected by the sweat, fear, and pain of our sister suffragettes, let me enlighten you. For those who have never been passed over for a job position or told to return for a business deal when you can bring your husband to assist you, to those who have never been whistled at like cattle in a roundup or been told that their place was in the home, let me fill you in on what's been happening outside of your little bubble. On August 26, 1920, the 19th amendment was ratified. This amendment finally gave American women the right to vote after a nearly 100 year long fight. 100 years! It took an entire century to convince the government that women should have the same rights as a man! During this time reform groups began multiplying all over the United States- temperance leagues, religious movements, moral-reform societies, anti-slavery organizations- ultimately leading up to the redefinition of the noun "woman". We get to live a comparatively comfortable life, whether or not we choose to pay homage to a legacy that over seven generations of women toiled to achieve through meetings, petition drives, lobbying, public speaking, and nonviolent resistance. We no longer have to marry and bear heirs in order to be taken care of; we don't have to be subservient and obedient maids. We get to vote, work a fulfilling job with the right to equal pay and we get to keep that job legally when we become pregnant. Our husbands do not own us, get to beat us, or take sex whenever they choose. WE choose to become doctors, lawyers, ministers, astronauts, to own property, to own a credit card, to fight on the front lines. WE CHOOSE to have bank accounts, serve on a jury, take birth control, wear practical bathing suits, go to college, breastfeed in public, or run the Boston marathon. Watching the Olympics was a crime for women, punishable by death (!), for the ancient Greeks. Women in New York City were banned from smoking cigarettes in public until 1908 because it was considered unbecoming. English women were disallowed to play in soccer matches until 1971 because the game was declared unsuitable for the female body. To this day it is supposedly still LEGAL for a man to beat his wife in South Carolina, as long as it takes place on the courthouse steps on a Sunday. The town of Owensboro, KY has a law that prohibits women from purchasing hats without her husbands consent. It's still illegal (though unenforced) for women in California to wear a housecoat while driving, and the city of Logan, Utah prohibits women from swearing. All of these ridiculous grievances aside, women who reside in countries other than our own are still being treated as less valuable than men, and in some cases less valuable than animals. Saudi women were banned from operating vehicles until June of 2018. In Yemen women are only considered to be half of a witness when testifying in court, and they aren't allowed to testify at all in cases of adultery or sodomy. In Morocco if a woman is raped then she faces charges for leaving her home without a male escort, and in this most recent case a sixteen year old girl committed suicide after a judge sentenced her to marry her rapist. What happened on the planet earth where this sort of gross mistreatment is considered normal? Where is the disconnect in our brains that makes women seem less important, less worthy, anything less than magical? We are the strong, the passionate, the indestructible, the indomitable. We birth this earth.
Any more questions?
“That woman has too long rested satisfied in the circumscribed limits which corrupt customs and a perverted application of the Scriptures have marked out for her, and that it is time she should move in the enlarged sphere which her great Creator has assigned her.”
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(Photo by Chris Ware/Keystone Features/Getty Images)
"September 1953: Twenty-one year old Alice Penfold, a professional strong woman from Bury, near Pulborough, Sussex, flexes her biceps. She can tear telephone directories in half and lift a 146 lb woman with her teeth."
- Flashbak |
