Speaking of Women’s Rights…

I’ve been thinking about women’s rights a lot today.  Last night’s debate showed us – yet again – the danger that a McCain-Palin administration would pose to our Roe v. Wade right to choose how we govern our own bodies.  And on my way to work this morning, I was shocked by an incident that reminds me how important it is to have an honest, public dialogue not only about a woman’s right to choose whether or not to have an abortion, but about sexual harassment and a woman’s right to feel safe.

I think that women’s rights are manifestations of basic human and civil rights – it should go without saying that men should also have the right to control their own bodies and to be respected and not harassed.  Yet, we do need to talk about women’s rights as such, because, I believe, those basic rights that belong to both men and women are more often in threat of being diregarded or violated in women’s lives.

This morning I was on the bus when a woman a few rows up began struggling to get out of her window seat, yelling “Keep your hands off me!”  She had to practically crawl over a man in the seat next to her to get to the aisle – a man who, from what I could tell by her reaction, had just groped her.  I felt sick and ashamed, but I, like every other person on that packed bus, didn’t say anything as she went to the front to talk to the driver.  Nobody knew what to say – although had I been closer I’d like to think I would have at least offered an, “Are you all right?!”  I think the driver may have called the police, but he also let the perp get off and saunter away at the next stop.

I didn’t realize just how much this incident had affected me until I got to work and stopped by a friend’s office to tell her about it.  Before I knew it, she was shoving Kleenex at me as I sat down and had a good cry.  I did not expect this.  But I realize, in reflecting on my reaction, that I really felt violated by the incident, even though it didn’t happen to me.  I felt violated, and I felt pissed off.  This happened just a week after I stood at a downtown bus stop (I like public transportation, but it is getting a bad rap here) and had a guy slide his arm over my shoulder and ask into my ear if I wanted to fuck him.  No.  What I want is a fucking break from being hooted at and whistled at and being told I’m beautiful by men who may or may not realize that I don’t take it as a compliment.  I’m sorry for the profanity, but this is going under Rants.

Usually when I feel unsafe it is not for fear of heights, or fire, or illness, or even the violence that comes with living on the edge of the Central District, where there were numerous drive-by shootings on the street where I used to live (just a few blocks from where I live now).  It is a difficult, maybe controversial thing to say, but when I feel unsafe, it is usually for fear of men.  I am not trying to stereotype anyone, or offend any male readers, or label myself as a manhater, or some other unsavory noun.  But I think that a lot of women live with that little persistent something that makes them quicken their step or cross the street when an almost always harmless (but rarely, tragically, sometimes not harmless) stranger comes up behind them.  The worst part is that, when this happens, I feel bad about myself.  I feel bad that I don’t feel confident enough to necessarily fend off someone who might want to take advantage of me, but I also feel bad that I am projecting my own fears onto mostly well-meaning, decent men.

My rant is that it is unacceptable to live in a community where a woman can get groped on a public bus during the morning work commute – at least, it is unacceptable to not work toward a safer community if this kind of thing is happening.  I don’t know whether it is more effective to frame a discussion of women’s safety and other rights under the topic of feminism, with all of its unfortunate stereotypes (has anyone else heard feminism called a “dirty word”?), or under “women’s rights” as another named movement, or as a discussion of what we all need – men and women – to feel respected in our society.  In any case, sexual harrasment and gender discrimination are not part of the past, but are a real, everyday issue that need to be at the forefront of our personal and political dialogue, if we want to see a change.

Scary

Recently the Presidential race has been heating up and with that so have the comments coming from voters.  Someone pointed me to a New York Times article entitled The South – For Some, Uncertainty Starts at Racial Identity.  The article talks about some Southerns’ views on Sen. Obama’s mixed race background.  There are quotes from people with thoughts that I truly think are archaic and uneducated, yet even with those excuses I am still astonished at how some can believe these things.

Here are two of the quotes mentioned:

“He’s neither-nor,” said Ricky Thompson, a pipe fitter who works at a factory north of Mobile, while standing in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart store just north of here. “He’s other. It’s in the Bible. Come as one. Don’t create other breeds.”

“I would think of him as I would of another of mixed race,” said Glenn Reynolds, 74, a retired textile worker in Martinsville, Va., and a former supervisor at a Goodyear plant. “God taught the children of Israel not to intermarry. You should be proud of what you are, and not intermarry.”

Both statements come from adult men who probably have children and/or grandchildren and it disheartens me to think that these idea(l)s are passed on to those kids.  I know that you can’t base a couple of comments on an entire way of thinking, but I doubt you’d get the same illocical thinking from Obama supporters and this is what scares me.  As McCain mentioned in the debate tonight, these people are on the fringes, but I query him, how much on the fringe are they?  For me, statements like these are not far removed from taking away a woman’s right to choose.  It truly perplexes me how people can still think like this!  As extreme as it might seem, this election is more than economics and reliance on foreign oil, it is about treating people as human beings, even those one believes are different from themselves.  People have been “interbreeding” for a while now and has the world come to an end?  Not yet and I doubt that when/if the world does end that it will be because people decided to create families with parents from different backgrounds.

I think what frustrates me most is that there is no one to enlighten these people.  Where will they find diversity?  Will their views ever change? I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, but is there any hope that they will see that we’re all just people?  I think that is what scares me most, that they will never see any different and that they’ll teach that to their children.  Our children are supposed to know more than us, do better than us, but in such a sheltered life, how can they?