Well the GREAT NEWS about today is that my dog Scooby crapped
and had his breakfast this morning (he didn’t eat last night and we suspected
he was bound up or possibly had a blockage so we were concerned)!!!
Other than that the ‘NEWS’ we woke up to this morning wasn’t
quite so good and has the potential to have far greater reaching negative
effects on us than we may even suspect.
I've thought a lot on how best I was going to
express my feelings about the fact that a majority of my fellow Americans chose
a candidate for our next president that is NOT for ALL of us but only for some
of us and whose ideas about American family values vastly differs from my own
and that of most of my friends. I wanted
to express my feelings in as non-dramatic, calm and rational way as
possible. I also wanted to express my
feelings without trying to make anyone else appear to be the ‘bad guy’. I
have a lot of very deep and troubling emotions going on inside of me today so I’ll
do my best to keep to the subject and to ‘go high’ instead of ‘low’.
I must say that as a woman I have some very deep feelings
and concerns about this AND IT IS NOT because the other candidate, the one I
wanted, is a woman. My support of her
has never had anything to do with her gender and in fact in the primaries she
was not my desired candidate. This is about my
being a female in a male dominated country that has just decided that they
wanted a man to lead our country who openly, unabashedly and happily reported
to another man that he physically forced himself on women that he found attractive and
that he could do whatever he wanted to them because he was rich and
famous. THAT is why I have concerns as a
female in this country today.
I grew up in the late 1960’s when women at the end of that decade were just beginning
to finally get some traction when it came to having ‘almost’ as much value in the
eyes of the law and society as a man did.
I grew up in the ‘sexual revolution’ when birth control was finally
being allowed and prescribed so we women had some semblance of control over
whether or not we got pregnant. Sadly it
was still a time when if a man beat his wife the authorities were rarely called
because it was considered to be his private business and the authorities really
didn’t want to get involved. I was a young teenager but was still aware that at
last women were afforded some small, but important, concessions by men as to
our worth and our ability to make our own choices; whether or not they involved
a man. So it was one small step forward
for women and a few steps back due to the resistance to our move for equality but
at least it was going in the direction of us women being considered as equals
to men in intelligence, ability and our basic value as a human being.
There are a LOT of women who will read this who weren’t born
yet and never really knew what it was like back then. Women had very few rights, were openly
discriminated against and were basically told by the men of this country to sit
down, shut up and don’t make waves. We
were told back then that our only value was as baby making machines and in our servitude to men. Money as you know is power so back then women who stayed home, raised the
kids and kept the home clean for their husbands had household allowances and
many were monitored and held accountable for what they spent and on what; kind of like children might be monitored and held accountable by their parents.
Most women had no means to support themselves should they choose to
leave and divorce their husbands so most women stayed in emotionally, mentally and physically abusive relationships. Believe it or not back then most men were
ashamed to let it be known that their wife worked because a working wife
suggested that the man was unable to support his family on his income alone and
therefore it was damaging to his reputation among his male peers as well as to
his ego. Back then many women who wanted to get a job, usually to have their own money that they could spend as they wished, were not allowed to by their husbands. Like other minorities of that era we were asked/required by the White Christian
men in charge of everything and by the men in many of our homes to be happy with whatever we
got, to never complain about how we were treated and to be extremely grateful
that we were even allowed to speak; and in some extreme, but not isolated, cases should be grateful we were even allowed to live.
So yesterday my fellow Americans demonstrated very clearly
to me and to all of the women in this country that how men treat us, including
in a sexual sense even if they are strangers to us, is not important. We were told only too loudly by the choice so
many made for OUR president that women’s issues are not important issues and
that we, as
a nation, are okay with having a man in the Whitehouse who has openly and
publicly denigrated women, has openly sexually assaulted women and who has
gloated about it to other males bragging about what he could get away with
because of his fame and fortune. This
gloating/bragging admission was just that, an admission, and it was not stated
by him to say what he’d like to do or what he’d fantasized about doing but
about what he HAD DONE. His apology,
much belated by several years and only because he got busted on video, was far from heartfelt
and his claims that he is different now have not been supported by his actions
and/or words since his admission to it.
As a female I find that to be a personal insult and very disconcerting in
a very big way…BIGLY, if you will. I
feel violated in a spiritual sense because the men, and some of the women, in
this country by majority made a statement that I and my life, along with my
sisters and fellow females (even those who voted for him), is of little value
to them. They have very clearly stated,
through their votes, that a man has a right to violate any woman any time in
any way, whether physically or verbally, and it is perfectly okay with
them. I will concede that those who
voted this man into office most likely didn’t give the women’s rights aspect of
what it means to support this man into account.
They were likely far too busy worrying about all of the ‘scary’ things
that their candidate convinced them they should be worried about to give women’s
rights or the women of this country a single thought. By their neglect in including women and our
rights in their consideration for president they have spoken even though they
don’t realize it.
There are MANY reasons why I am so very disappointed and
hurt by how many people voted for Trump but this one is the one, the vote
against women, that directly involves me and at some point may directly affect
me. Along with my concern for myself,
for my sisters and fellow women in this country, I also have a very grave and
real concern for people of color, people who are Muslim as well as for liberal
minded people and what these now emboldened people, who clearly do not like any
of us much, will do to us believing that they are now ‘in charge’. I can’t and
won’t predict what bad things may to happen. Unlike the people who voted for Trump who seem to have made up their minds what would happen if his opposition were voted in, I
really don’t think that I or anyone else can accurately predict anything that
may or may not happen in the future.
In the end I have to sadly admit that I had absolutely no
idea that so many fellow citizens in this country truly wanted the kind of way
of life in our country that they have voted for in this election. I had no idea that so many people were so
nostalgic about the middle of the last century, the 50's and 60's, to want to go back to it and relive it again. I am truly stunned by
it and by the knowledge that there are so many people out there who apparently don’t
feel equality is important, be it racial or gender equality, or that staying
true to what OUR country was based on by our forefathers is important. I am deeply saddened that so
many people feel so disenfranchised in this country that they would see us go
backwards rather than to progress forward.
I don’t know what the next four years hold in store for us but I fear
that being a liberal is going to be frowned upon, that being a person of color
is going to be more dangerous than it already is, that what religion one chooses may be dangerous and that we are going to
ostracize ourselves from the rest of the world believing that isolationism is
the answer to all of our problems. I deeply and sincerely hope that I'm 100% incorrect in my fears but...
I guess those of us who hoped and those who have worked so
hard for a brighter future where we join the rest of the world in making life
better for everyone in it will just have to keep on keepin’ on in the hope that
somehow some way we can work with others to manifest positive changes in our
society and our country.
Good luck to us!!! I
think we are going to need it…
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