I have been thinking quite a lot for the last few months
about what is going on regarding women’s rights in the United States of
America. United States, yet there is no unity being displayed when it comes to
women and their rights and their placement in the land of man. In the name of
God, many laws have been proposed and enacted that strip women of our basic
rights. Men, in power, have not only written these laws, but they have been
known to deny women even to communicate their feelings and opinions regarding
these laws. The war against women is blunt and evident.
As I am puzzled as to what is the cause of all this hatred
displayed towards women. I am trying to come up with explanations that will
shed light onto why is this sentiment against women being promoted and
perpetuated in 2012. One of my friends offered her comments and I think she is
right. I will elaborate.
The male supremacy is instilled in us since birth. Through socialization,
we are taught that everything masculine is more powerful, better, bigger. The sun
is masculine and its light nurtures every living creature. The moon is feminine
and we don’t really know what its purpose is.
Our dads are the law, our moms are soft. Boys are socialized to be
strong. Girls are socialized to be “girlie”. And so forth. Images of men being
superior are taught to us in everything. Children’s literature always portrays
princesses that need to be saved and the prince that comes in a shining armor
and a white horse to save them. And so forth. How won’t these messages permeate
our psyche? Of course these messages create the paradigms that we live by and
that are the root to how women get treated in the US and in the world.
I propose that we need to start young. We need to teach equality
from the time children are born. We need to teach boys to be strong and girls
too. We need to teach girls to be nurturers and boys too. We need both sexes to
learn to be compassionate towards each other and that both females and males
have a valuable place in society and in the world and that both are equally
valuable. If we keep teaching girls to play with kitchens and dolls and then to
be smart and go to college, but we don’t teach boys the same, women will still
work double shifts-working outside the home and being the primary caregivers as
oppose to men who primarily work outside the home, their home workload is
limited, yet they are held in higher esteem because they are men. Men will
continue to earn more if both sexes don’t share the load at work and at home,
equally.
The hatred towards women is not new but it’s has taken a
political dimension that, although is not unprecedented, it signifies a renaissance
in the retro notions about women and their worth. We need to change our way of thinking about
the sexes and start doing things differently to get different results. Equality
and thus the war on women will end once and for all when we raise both boys and
girls to see each other with the same degree of respect.
