I have had enough. I have asked why I’m an insult, I have asked why I’m portrayed as inferior, a toy, disposable… I have tried to get people to think about why women are portrayed as objects, why men view us as ‘pussy’, ‘ass’, ‘tail’… and why women do too. No-one has given me a direct answer. No-one has given me a root cause of why society says I’m less than a (hu)man. So, enough. There obviously is no reason why I’m inferior, less than a (hu)man. So the “locker-room talk” stops now.
I am not ‘pussy.’ I am not ‘tail.’ And I am not something for a ‘man’ to grab whenever he feels like it. And neither is anyone else. What Donald Trump said was not simply sexist it was hate speech. Permitted hate speech. Hate speech that this country, for all of it progressiveness, has turned a blind eye to since its conception. And it stops now.
We teach about race in schools. How discrimination is wrong, narrow-minded, and cruel. We, as a country, have acknowledged our sin of slavery and make a show of repentance even though we don’t make much of a practice of actually being friends with people of different colors of skin, or religion, or any other divisive means we choose to label one another. We fully embrace our wrongs teaching of the cruelty, brutality, and downright sadistic atrocities committed against people of color in our public school curriculums. Every child learns about it in more and more graphic detail as they progress through the grades. We teach about the Holocaust, how hatred and political machinations nearly wiped out an entire ethnicity, industrializing murder on a horrific and unprecedented scale. And every child in our public schools learns about this in evermore detail each progressing year. If someone chose to have their child opt-out the classes on slavery or the Holocaust they’d be publicly shamed. But when it comes to teaching about sex education, in other words; women in general, how our bodies work, what rape is, what sexual assault is, how to behave towards women in public and private, parents can opt-out their children on moral grounds. Sex education is optional. The classes where they teach you to respect women and how to be responsible about your body are optional. These classes should be mandatory for all public education students and obviously their parents as well.
Nowhere is women’s history thoroughly taught, or sometimes even mentioned, in most public school curriculums. When classic literature is discussed, take the Iliad, Odyssey, anything by Shakespeare, Hemingway, etc., the class distinctions and racial stereotypes are pointed out as wrong, but the way women are treated is never touched upon. Even in history classes women’s history gets maybe a chapter out of the entire book. And that chapter mostly focuses on the women’s liberation movement of the 1960’s-70’s. It doesn’t tell of how we women fought in the revolution, how we we’re part of the catalyst that brought about the end of slavery, how we fought for worker’s rights and unions, all the while being denied the vote, the right to work, the right to a higher education, the right to be in control of our own bodies, lives, money, and family. And how every time we spoke up and said we wanted these things, we were, and are, brushed to the side. Told by those men we fought for and supported through hell: “Your support is welcome, but we have bigger things to take care of than what you’re whining about. Can’t you see the world’s a mess?” The world is always a mess and will continue to be a mess as long as half of its population is viewed as ‘pussy.’
The violence and degradation, we women receive in this day and age in this country is on par with slavery and the Holocaust. Rape, beatings, killings. And it is far more deeply ingrained in our culture than many people recognize because it’s profitable. The big blockbuster movies glorify violence against women, TV portrays us as “the whores who had it coming,”“it” being either murder, or rape, or sexual assault. Professional highly paid men, call women names on national television and radio that if the equivalent word were said about a specified ethnicity it would cost them their jobs. And it’s allowed. And worse excused. “Boys will be boys.”“It’s locker-room talk.”“Boys pick on girls because they like them.”
Well, I and every other self-respecting woman, do not want a ‘boy’ for a husband, life-partner, soul-mate, best-friend. We want men. Men who unconditionally love and respect us. Men who stand up to the ‘boys’ and tell them they are not allowed to treat women like ‘pussy.’ Men who support us when we speak up for ourselves and fight for our rights just like we’ve done for them. Men who say that learning about how to treat women, and about sex, and about being responsible with your body, should not be an option. We want men who recognize that women and the work we do is what has carried the torch of this country’s highest ideals towards the besting of its sins. And that we women will continue to carry that torch for as long as necessary. And that they, the men, should be extremely grateful, and acknowledge all of our contributions as on par with everything that men have done to contribute to this country.
To reiterate: Enough. No one has given me a reason as to why I’m less than a (hu)man. Because there is no reason. I am human, woman, and like it or not, equal to any man anywhere in space or time. No one may call me, or anyone else, ‘pussy.’