Climbing The Mountain

It’s been said that, “Women are like an apple, lovely without and rotten within”. The identity of women has been pondered from classical Greece until today. Men have described women as a necessary evil, a natural temptation, an inescapable punishment, an evil nature, a domestic danger and a beautiful evil. Women have been characterized as being a gift for men, empty vessels used for reproduction and the bearers of all evil. From Eve to Pandora these characterizations have shaped the perception of how women are looked at and validated the reasoning for their treatment in society. These perceived views have had a detrimental effect on the status of women and still do today.

On August 26, 1920, the 19^th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States was ratified, enfranchising all women and declaring for the first time that they had earned and deserved the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. For nearly 100 years activists and reformers fought endlessly to win the right for women to vote and be acknowledged for their contributions to society. Women insisted they had proven by their work on behalf of the war effort, that they were just as patriotic and deserving of citizenship as men. On Election day in 1920 millions of American women exercised their right to vote for the first time. It was not a easy road, but a high mountain they climbed and how the landscape of America changed on that day in history. Today with the attacks on our rights we again have to climb that mountain.

In the last year the conservatives have introduced over 1,000 bills that would lessen and even take away the rights of women. We have seen them attempt to dictate and in some cases take away our health care. We have seen the legal term for victims of rape, stalking and domestic violence changed to “accuser”, leaving victims of other less gendered crimes like burglary remain as “victims”. South Dakota Republicans have proposed a bill that would make it LEGAL to murder a doctor who provides abortion care. In Virginia we saw a bill forcing women to have a “vagina probe” and forced to view the images, claiming this will make a women that wants an abortion change her mind. In Arizona they passed a bill that claims a women is pregnant 2 weeks before conception. In Washington there is currently a bill by Republicans that would allow a women to die rather than perform an abortion necessary to save her life. We have watched the Republicans vote for an amendment to cut all federal funding from Planned Parenthood health centers claiming the majority of what they do is abortions paid for by taxpayer money. Conservatives with the help of religious fanatics are fully aware that this blatant lie angers their fanatical followers that believe “God” has given them the right to tell others how to live their lives. In Texas Governor Perry took health care away from 130,000 women. As bad as the attack has been on our health care that’s not where it ends. The Republicans are now taking aim at the elderly, of which two-thirds of them are women. They have introduced a spending bill that would cut meals and housing for our seniors. They go after the children they claim to care so much about by pushing a bill that would cut nearly a billion dollars of food and other low-income programs for pregnant women, mothers, babies and kids. In Maryland Republicans ended all county money for low-income kids’ preschool programs. Why? They claim women should be home with the kids not out working. We have seen bills that go against a women’s right for sick leave, maternity leave and any other time needed to deal with family issues. In Wisconsin and in Washington DC we see bills that would discriminate against women on fair pay in the workplace with more Republican controlled states attempting the same. The Republicans state over and over they would love to be able to stop women from voting and overturn civil rights. Once again, this shows the mental patients have escaped the facility and for the good of all need to be rounded up and put back in.

There is not a day that goes by, that millions of women in America are not frightened of being a woman in America today. We are being forced to climb that mountain again, making a point to the men and a lot of women that they will not take our rights away and if they continue to push the issue they will lose. It is claimed by the Republicans that women will forget about all of these attacks by November when it is time to vote. They think wrong. Women have memories like elephants and it’s not over until we say it is...let the war begin. 

My dad always said to make a point, the punishment needed to be worse than the crime. Men need to be reminded we will not be legally abused and taken advantage of and the power of sex has worked in women’s favor since the beginning of time and still works well today. The days where we were thought of as a “raw material” have long been over, and we have no problem climbing up that mountain to make this point.