Respect Begins With Yourself

Recently I spent a day with my mother who is in her 80's. We had a long overdue talk about women, marriage, and choices. There has been an issue in our family centered on my father's inability to take others' feelings into account. It was time to talk about that and to offer my mother a way around him. Her answer was that she had been married for more than six decades and wasn't about to rock the boat now. She went on to say that she had a good marriage. Her husband (my father) had never beat her, never cheated on her, and she never had to worry about money. Her life and marriage had been so much better than any of her friends. This was a moment of absolute clarity for me. What had been intellectual knowledge suddenly became a living, breathing piece of my own life.  My thoughts raced. Why were those things not even a thought, let alone an issue, in my own life and marriage?

What are feminists today screaming about? My generation burned our bras (not exactly a proud moment in hindsight) for pete's sake. We demanded that we be seen as capable human beings with talents and intelligence. We went toe to toe in the workplace with men. We shattered every glass ceiling we encountered. We showed that we were worth being paid equal to men based on our abilities and achieved that goal (today's wages are three cents less than men's wages when all jobs and wages across the board are accounted for.) We disagreed or agreed politically based on merit, not some misplaced idea that women need to band together simply because of gender. We supported each other whether a woman's choice was a career or a family or both.  We learned to respect ourselves and command the respect of others by being the best of our talents and intelligence. This all flashed through my mind as my mother spoke. Then my mind began going over the events we witness today.

So, what is left to be achieved as a whole? We stood and demanded equal opportunity and achieved it. All that is left is on an individual basis. Yes, humanity can always be bettered as a whole, but we aren't talking about that. We are focusing on what women can do to be equal to men. It is the wording of that which has become the problem. The truth is we are not equal to men. We are not even equal to each other. We have equal opportunity, not equal outcomes. We fought and earned the right to do whatever it is our own talents and intelligence will allow us to do. A woman can choose to stay at home and focus solely on home and family. A woman can choose to focus solely on career. A woman can choose to do both. A woman can choose. However, no woman can do anything unless she recognizes her own worth and has self respect.  The feminists of today march around dressed as vaginas. They are showing themselves as nothing more than their reproductive parts. That is not empowering. That is degrading. I am a woman. I do not respect the women who do this. How can they expect members of the opposite sex to respect them if they only think of themselves as reproductive organs. Of course that isn't how they see what they are doing. The truth, though, is that it is how they are being seen. No matter what their intentions are, their methods fail them.  

It is time for the young women of today to remember what their mothers and grandmothers did, how far women have actually come. To realize that the only thing between them and respect, success, and equal opportunities is themselves.  Dressing as a vagina, demeaning men, screaming that nothing is fair shows only an inability to use your own talents and intelligence. Make your choices, ladies, and do your best with those talents and the intelligence you possess. Show that you know and respect yourself. Respect the choices of other women even if they are not the same as yours. What follows, naturally, from that is respect from others and opportunities that are equal to you. To do otherwise is to fail. And that is a choice.