I'm very excited about Feminist Coming Out Day, an event to raise awareness & help us realize that all of us–single, married, all genders, all races, all political parties–are feminists. (Learn more here.) We support the rights of women to choose their career, their role in the home, their interests. We support, with that, the rights of men to do the same. We need to break the dichotomy. We need to learn to live together & respect each other.
Feminist Coming Out Day is featuring pictures & snip-its by self-proclaimed feminists, showing us that we are feminists in our own way, by our own definition. I finally worked up the courage to submit my tiny two-cents, & they posted it! They're incredibly kind, & I encourage you to do the same. They make it very easy when you click here.
Their work couldn't come at a better time.
There's a lot going on for women's rights in the States right now, & I can't get my mind off of it. I've been concerned about women's issues since I realized that I would not grow up to be a member of New Kid's on the Block, that I would grow up to be a woman. I knew words like Glass Ceiling and Second Wave, but I never could have imagined, after we saw ourselves as so past these things–though admittedly still struggling–that I would learn words like Stupak Amendment or Justified Murder of abortion doctors.
I never thought my country could take actions to stop women's rights to an abortion in cases of rape or dangerous pregnancies. I never thought the country would seek to redefine rape & say the victim didn't try hard enough. I never thought we would try to stop Planned Parenthood, a program that provides not only abortion, but exams for cervical & breast cancer; stopping Planned Parenthood is stopping the health care of three million women. (For more information, watch or read about this Democracy Now interview with PP's president.)
I never thought I would be truly & deeply afraid to live in the United States. To have a daughter born there. To ask for birth control when it is for my mental & physical health and NOT FOR preventing pregnancy. I never thought we could try to move back so far while saying, so often, that the fight is for God.
Change.org, a site Joe introduced me to, collects petitions for various causes. They have several successful petitions going to work to stop this legislation on their Women's Rights page. It costs nothing, takes almost no time & helps us speak to our government.
If you're even ballsier, contact your representatives (whom their page still refers to as "Congressmen") or e-mail your Senator. If you don't, who will?
Keep yourself informed with two easy articles:
What stopping Planned Parenthood means for low-income women
And on a tangent... we pick NOW to argue about breast feeding?
3 comments:
My junior year I took a class called "Feminism in Black & White". It was about the tenuous relationship between black and white women throughout history and how that affected whether or not black women (and other women of color) defined themselves as feminists. It was a crazy awesome class and I learned more than I thought possible. I also now consider myself a feminist because now I understand the real definition of feminism.
I'd love to hear more about that! That class sounds fascinating. I hope you'll consider taking some time to contact Congress or rant about it on your own social media. You're an incredibly strong woman, and I always value your opinions.
I think I'll write something about this. It's been on my mind for a while.
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