A Caring and Creative Mind Can Change The World
A Caring and Creative Mind Can Change The World
Featured Discussion Post
From a young age, I quickly learned that women, both young and old, were often the target of backhanded, condescending, and scathing opinions and retorts.
In Books
If a woman likes to read or write romance, other people automatically discount her as a smart intelligent person and reader. Because those books are nothing but sex-filled drivel. They can’t give a person anything of value because there’s nothing respectful about them. They can’t deal with relationships or childhood trauma or abuse or any other topic of real interest to people because they’re nothing but sex books. Just sex. On every page. In every paragraph. They don’t teach people anything. They don’t inspire people. They don’t do anything but give women a false sense of love and relationships. They fill a woman’s head with nonsense and then men can never measure up because they’re being held to a fantasy that can never be real.
In Music and Acting
If a girl or woman likes a boy band or a cute actor of the moment, she must need to grow up because that group or person can’t be talented or
worthy of admiration. Teenage girls don’t know good music. Women don’t know good music. They only see the cute boy at the forefront. They only hear what they want to hear not the truth of what’s being said. Real music, real acting, is by done by other people. Older people. Older men.
In Careers and Hobbies
If a woman likes to do anything remotely resembling a man’s field, she must be gay. There’s no way a real woman would want to do those things. Because if a woman was real, she would want to cook, clean house, get married, and have babies. She wouldn’t have intelligent thoughts or opinions. Woman don’t do that. Not real woman.
In Life
How many times have women had to endure comments like the ones above? Too many to count, and in October 2017, that’s pretty damn sad. We’ve come so far in so many ways, and yet, we still have so much more to go. So much more to go.
Because women are people. Women have thoughts and opinions that matter. Women like sex. Women like romance. Women even like cars, motorcycles, boats, fishing, hunting, and all sorts of other “man” related interests. Women can even *gasp* say no to unwanted sexual attention and advances. They can turn down marriage proposals and decide not to have children. They can focus on their careers and choose not to stay home and cook and clean the house.
You want to know why?
Because women are intelligent human beings who know what they want and have the right to pursue it. Women have dreams, goals, and other interests that have nothing to do with being the center of desire and entertainment for men. And they have a right to be that without some man thinking he has a right to own and possess them.
Let me repeat that.
Women are intelligent human beings who know what they want and have the right to pursue it. Women have dreams, goals, and other interests that have nothing to do with being the center of desire and entertainment for men. And they have a right to be that without some man thinking he has a right to own and possess them.
I know, it’s a heady concept, isn’t it? So difficult to wrap one’s brain around it, and yet, gosh darn it, it’s true.
The saddest part about this way of thinking is that it’s not just coming from the men who believe women should still be in the house cooking, pregnant, or naked and ready for sex. It’s coming from some women, too. Women who, for whatever reason, feel the need to tear another woman down. To make fun of her choices, her lifestyle, her dreams, her goals, her heart. Women who make it their mission in life to get the others to fall in line with their way of thinking. Because that’s the way things are done, right? The way they’ve always been done. Women have a role and every single one of us is supposed to adhere to that role.
Well, screw that. I am a woman. I am my own woman. I have my own thoughts and opinions and dreams and goals and interests. I am not gay. I am not anti-men. I am not anti-people. I am anti-bullshit, though. And lately, I’ve heard far too much bullshit. By men and women alike.
What’s with all the shaming?
People are fat-shamed. People are slut-shamed. People are race-shamed. People are career-shamed. People are shamed in every single avenue I can think of and it’s getting worse.
The Internet has made it far too easy for people to bully others. For people to try and tear someone else down. But that’s only the half of it. Because the truth is, people are just as bad offline as they are online. Manners have gone out the window along with the right of the people to live their own lives and have their own ideals. These days, everyone has an opinion about someone else and no one seems to care if that opinion hurts other people because they have a right to express their opinion and they are taking it, regardless of whether or not someone else actually wants to hear it.
We Can and Should Do Better
As human beings, we need to do better. We need to realize that just because we’re thinking something, it doesn’t mean we should say it. We need to understand that when we say things about someone else, we lack knowledge of how that person is feeling on the inside. We lack understanding of how our words may affect that person in the moment. How they may stay with them for days, weeks, months, even years. How they may lead that person to make a choice that, had those words never been said aloud, may not have come to pass.
Do better. Be better. Be kind.
I am you. You are me. Together, we are us. And we are one.