So, what is the state of women?
It’s 2011. Where are we, girls, and where do we stand?
Well, first, why do I even still have to separate us from them? I thought we were all about gender equality, so why are women’s interests still for women only? I would think that anything that concerns us would concern everyone. This just doesn’t seem to be the case though. Take, for example, legislation passed in the U.S., a giant crime bill back in 1993 which also included the Violence Against Women Act, materializing things like sexual assault and the dangers women faced both on the street and in court (since it was implied that women brought these things upon themselves). But what about sex crimes against men? The transgendered? No?
Also, notice how I write girls. I did it on purpose. Why infantilize fully grown women by calling us girls? Doesn’t it bother you? We don’t do the same with men, except perhaps in a mocking tone, and even then it’s only sparingly. I stopped being a ‘girl’ a long time ago, so I don’t see why I should take anyone seriously when they say something like ‘protect these girls’ and they’re seriously referring to women. Girls this, girls that. I didn’t realize we are so immature and incapable that even the language used to describe us must be infantile.
I mean, does anyone stop to listen to how United States legislators talk and describe women every time they push some bill limiting contraceptives or abortion? “This is for their best interest” or “This is to protect them from the consequences”. Might I ask, what’s in our best interest? What consequences are you protecting us from? In fact, why should you care that much? Is our best interest to submit control of our bodies to you? That’s what it seems like. We’re dangerous, we’re obscene. Better to stay home and get married and pop kids out. Never mind the women who are raped, who are in dangerous relationships (married or not), or those who don’t understand their own bodies. Or don’t have a voice to say no.
And anyway, isn’t it always all our fault? No matter what it is. Oh, we bit the forbidden fruit. Oh, we bewitched you into falling for us, a goddess in the sky. My, we’re reading books, how terrible. Besides the point, how interesting for you to solely think of the white, middle class women. What about African-Americans? Hispanics? No? Or better yet, how about those non-traditional families? That legislation you force in some states, about parental consent for abortion, you assume every household is beautiful and wonderful with Mom baking cookies while Dad’s reading the paper after work. A lot of kids only have Mom busting her back. Or Dad. Or neither, maybe they live with their grandparents who they can’t talk about sex with because they’re not comfortable with them.
Why does anyone still care? Religious reasons? Oh that’s right, we should listen to a book written almost entirely allegorically about a society that lived in a desert several thousand years ago. Beards were for protection from desert storms. Forbidding pork is because it won’t stay in one piece in that kind of weather. There are no apples in deserts that whole thing about Eve isn’t real anyway. In fact, the only things that should be taken away from this book is that part of it is allegorical history, and the other part is about a good man who defied the social expectation of how the rich go to heaven and the poor are terrible and diseased, even though he was rich himself. And he preached love to one another. He didn’t preach a church that would have pedophile priests. He didn’t preach a church at all.
And here I’m going on about Western society, where despite the messages women get from the media and from society to simply be walking vessels and get underpaid and are simply there for ogling sake, we still have it better. We just need to glance around at other countries, where women aren’t allowed to work, or work terrible jobs, or are punished for giving birth to little girls, or have no other means to protect themselves from pregnancy, and legally and socially have no way out. We make up more than half of the world’s population, but we’re treated like dirt. What the hell guys?
It’s 2011, and we’re exactly the same as a century ago. Except now we have iPhones to giggle at.
