It's a Long Road

I loved when Aziz Ansari used Episode 7 Ladies and Gentlemen, in his new show Master of None to show side by side what the difference is in being a man versus a woman. It is absolutely beautiful to see a man thinking about these things. The fact that he addressed this in his show tells what kind of person he is. I'm impressed. My husband is a man like that. He thinks about these things. He will not stay in the room to watch anything on TV that shows violence against women or children. He should not be alone but sometimes I think that he is.

Just today I saw a joke about rape on Facebook that even after I noted to that person that rape is not a joke, he still defended it. Rape is in no way funny. Some things just aren't to be joked about. Slavery isn't funny. Molesting or harming children isn't funny. Slaughtering whole populations of people, not funny. The ladies that Bill Cosby raped are not fictional characters. They are real life, breathing people. What happened to them is not a joke.

I know that it feels threatening to the male population to think that women should be treated equal. I realize that this might make them feel like less of a man but I can tell you it takes a man who is strong in who he is to be able to set aside his masculinity to make others feel equal. There are things that men do better than women but there's as many things that women do better than men. This isn't true in all cases but in general. We all have our strengths and weaknesses. Does this elevate one sex over the other? No, it does not.

It is a shame when women cannot go any place they want alone. But we cannot. We have to take a lot of things into consideration. Men have no idea what this is like. I remember at a very young age, asking my mother why I couldn't do the same things my brothers were allowed to do. The answer was the same every time I asked from as early as I can remember around five through my teenage years. "Because they are boys." That is the world we women have lived in.

A man I knew when I was in high school wrote a detective novel. In the story a lady is accidentally murdered when a man chloroforms her with the idea he will have sex with her without her knowing. One of the times he overdoes the chloroform and she winds up dead. I read the book to give him my opinion. When I didn't say the things this writer thought I would he asked me if I thought he had written the murder's character in a way that readers might take pity on him and root for him. That blew my mind. I asked him if he realized that this man had raped this woman. He didn't see it that way.  I was stunned. I have to say that if this were reversed and someone, anyone forced an object into any orifice on a man's body while he was unconscious he would think he had been violated. Women are thinking, feeling people. We should not be looked at as an object to please men. Yet from the moment when we take our bodies out into the world we are warned in every way that we should live our lives like the men we encounter have no self control. That is why we have limits on how short our skirts/shorts can be. It's why we have special rules for our daughters about how they dress in school because the way they dress might entice a male that we assume will not be able to control his self at the sight of her dressed a certain way. We have rules for girls about not enticing males but we never speak to the young men regarding self control. We let the females assume the role of keeping the order. It is so one sided.

Sometimes women are worse than men about seeing women as equal. In fact, the rape joke on Facebook got a lot of "likes" from women. That is a real shame. Playing small to appease the male species takes away our power. It doesn't just take away the power of the person playing small but it takes the power from all women. I kind of equate this to when one African American person says that another African American man brought on the violence perpetrated on him by society and then every racists white person reposts it to further their own agenda. Other African American's mostly do not repost these posts, only white people do. I see it all the time. Ladies if you don't want to be equal to all other people on this planet keep it to yourself and let the rest of us rise up out of these ashes and be what we are called to be. Don't hold your foot on the throat of the rest of us.

What's funny is that there are people who will read this and think about what a bitch I am. It doesn't make me a bitch to want what everyone should want. I want to be seen for exactly who I am regardless of my sex. I want to be able to go wherever I want, whenever I want and not be fearful. I want men in this world feeling like they can hold their own head up high because the women next to them are finally able to hold their heads high. I want men to be as proud of us as we want to be of ourselves.

Ladies, tell the men in your life the stories about the times you've been physically mistreated by males in your life. Tell them about the times you've feared for your safety in the presence of men. They need to know. They need to have a picture in their minds about what it's like to not feel safe in the female body. They need to know what part they can play in making our worlds better.

To those men out there that would never harm or want to see a woman harmed, I know you feel alone and you might feel like you are invisible to women but you won't always be. What the world has taught us about being women has sent us to the arms of what we feel we deserve. We don't think we deserve you because right now we cannot see you because our world taught us that we are here for the pleasure of men. If you see us as equal beings then we feel undeserving. If and when we see through this we'll finally see you standing where you've been all along and your brilliant love will leave us in awe.

Men, if you are not standing up for the equal rights of the women in your life then you aren't equal either. Women, if you don't stand for yourself then no one will stand for you. We can all be the change. Think about your daughters and how you want them treated.

One last thing. To all you men out there that get exactly what I'm saying, Thank You SO Much. You are needed and appreciated and I'm happy I get to call one of you my husband.

Note: I'd like to extend an apology to the young man on facebook I spoke of. I do believe him to be a good person. I  did not want to change what I first wrote here because I was honest about  feeling the way I did at the time I wrote it. Now I see that bringing up something so personal might taint the whole purpose of this post so I made a tiny nip and tuck. I'd just like to say one more thing to him. "Son,  you didn't know that you were stepping in a bucket that was almost full. Once you stepped in you made it overflow." You were the straw. If my sentiments seem to marginalize men and that brings up emotion for them then maybe they'll have some idea of what it's like to be seen the way that women feel seen everyday.