Take Their Feet Off Our Necks

Our beloved Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the fiery advocate for gender equality, is a current Justice in the US Supreme Court.  Even before joining the Court, in 1973 Ginsburg argued the case of a female Air Force Officer who was denied a housing allowance because of  her gender, Ginsburg quietly quoted another female Abolitionist, “All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.”

Strangely enough, the tradition of male domination has been bided since the dawn of the Universe. Males and females have been always more or less equal in number, but thousands years ago a visional guy got a whiff of God.  Like lightning, spirit inspired a bunch of men who grabbed sacred quills and scribbled divine stories in every language from every community in the world.  Male activists translated, edited, edited and edited, ordained themselves and their friends who preached and preached while sculptured powerful religions.

Hinduism, like all other prominent religions, portray women playing roles to understand how the world works, but we women are actualized marginalized by religious law. Preordained rules by males, women have been subjected to all sorts of atrocities. Rape, domestic abuse, sex trafficking, and prevalent rapes of US female military by male soldiers, draw very small penalties.

European historians boast that the Athenian leader, Cleisthenes, founded Democracy in 507 B.C. Accorded to Herodotus wrote, “There is, the most splendid virtues, equality before the law.” That cheerful idea rode patriarchy tide after tide – year after year – to come to rest the soggy steps of the 2019 US White House, a throne dished corruption, greed and race and gender injustice.

Women still gulp for breath because male dominant feet are still pressed our necks.  The US Senate represented only 25% women, the US House represented only 23.49% and the US Supreme Court consists of six male justices and only three female justices. Vermont has never elected a woman to Congress.

The Silicon Valley tech industry revealed a significant gap between women and men.  Men own 91 percent of employee and founder equity, leaving women with a mere 9 percent.  A female tech worker earns 80 cents for every dollar earned by a man.  Women make up only 44 percent of companies with more than 500 employees and that percentage drops drastically in smaller companies.

Female workers at Walmart–the biggest retailer—were paid $1.16 less an hour than men in the same positions. Female employees in salaried positions that paid an average of $50,000 a year were paid $14,000 less than men in the same positions.  Most managers are men.

Considering abortion, a women issue, one misguided guy assumed moral authority of the US Constitution and God in the same sentence!  Republican Senator Clyde Chambliss of Alabama sponsored the most fanatical anti-abortion bill in the country. The bill passed with the support of 25 white, male Republican senators who must have lost their mental grasp of the First Amendment when Chambliss declared, “When God creates the miracle of life inside a woman’s womb, it is not our place as human beings to extinguish that life.”

Hmnn . . . did God have sex with a woman?  Or maybe God passed along a tube of sperm to a woman? Didn’t Senator Chambliss and his other 25 senators know that the intimate sex act with a mortal man and a mortal woman can result in pregnancy?

According to Senator Chambliss and his chums, a girl or woman sometimes become pregnant because a befouled man raped her or commits incest. Surely God had nothing with such a cruel crime. However, Chambliss declared that a raped or incest victim (a female treated as misused property) is responsible for what? Paying for nine months of care, delivery of an infant and raise a child??

There was no mention that such a forced “miracle” ordered legal penalty to the offender. Chambliss didn’t mention any punishment for men who rape women?  Apparently he and his political sidekicks considered rapists quite acceptable but any Alabama doctor who conducted an abortion will be imprisoned from 10 to 99 years.

Ordinary women know a lot about more being pregnant and their choices by just listening to other women.  Women also know that Georgia, Kentucky, Ohio, Alabama, Missouri, Louisiana, Mississippi consider pregnant women as property and AVOID those states if possible. Making the challenging decision regarding any pregnancy, we recognize the right to consult our family and friends, referred doctors who support her nine months and deliver a welcomed healthy infant or conduct a safe, professional abortion. We have to right to consult our own religion, Planned Parenthood, other sister organizations and ACLU.

We live a male-dominant world, but most women refuse agree male-controlled religion or fascist propaganda.  We trust our own brains and our own hearts to accept ONLY the information we want or need.  We know and every other woman knows that the women deserve to have the right to choose having a baby or have an abortion.

We do have the right to take to look after ourselves. Don’t worry, we women are rising through the cracks of power.

American women fought for our right to vote in 1920.  Me Too is still alive and the US Women’s Soccer Team has been very out front in their pursuit of pay equity with Men’s soccer. This year on International Women’s Day, the team sued the soccer federation for pay equity and better working conditions. Megan Rapinoe, the outspoken Forward, stated “we feel a responsibility not only to stand up for what we know we deserve as athletes—but also for what we know is right, on behalf of our teammates, our future teammates, fellow women athletes and women around the world.”  They won.

Very soon Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will revisit a stronger version of “Roe vs Wade.” To honor Ruth, her colleagues will stand up for their wives, sisters, nieces, mothers, daughters, grandmothers and granddaughters to vote to give the right of all women to have a baby or have an abortion.