color me perplexed

i haven’t been writing much because i am having difficulty wrapping my mind around america.  especially my fellow ‘vagina americans’- and yes, i think that that term is a hoot.  thanks to samantha bee of the daily show.  i am increasingly perplexed at the sheer amount of women who think and believe conservatively.  ‘traditionalists’ i guess you would call them.  this post isn’t going to be a big ramble because i just don’t understand how you can be a woman and be against women’s rights.  not just about abortion- that is a small part- but on bigger issues.  as american women, we haven’t fought for much of anything.  yeah!  we got the right to vote.  big deal.  i guess it stopped there.  we gave up the fight for equal pay, equal healthcare and research, equality in the home, equality in the justice system, equality in the military, we have largely given up the fight for contraceptives- we are abdicating our rights back to the male dominated patriarchy- and for what?

it’s true that we can hold jobs in most sectors of the work force- but it is still true that we get passed over for promotions and whatnot.  if anything, this election process has highlighted and brought back into the open the facts that misogyny and racism are as alive as ever and not as underground as one might think.  millions of women live below the poverty line and attempt to raise families in that environment.  and they are called ‘welfare  moms’ by the ’soccer and hocky moms’ set.  millions of women are abused daily by spouses, family members, strangers- and they are called ‘weak’ by the women who have led sheltered lives.

at this time in our history, american women have the right to go places and do things unchaperoned.  we can eat what we want and drive where we want and screw who we want- for the most party without impunity.  with ‘role models’ like sarah palin, lynn cheney, and the rest of the right wing ilk coupled with the christian ilk- how long is that going to last?  with the rise of the police state, how long before women lose their freedoms in the name of ‘protection’ and security?  it smacks of the southern plantation days- or the victorian era- when women were not supposed to be educated or think for themselves.  where women were supposed to be eye candy and live for the will of the husband.

we have come a long way baby- and now we’re headed back.

Sphere: Related Content

I’m worried too, Ms. Steinem…

This spot-fucking-on post is from The Angry Black Bitch. I was going to write one up..put she covers it all-Dusty

This isn’t an easy post to write. I am a proud black feminist who holds a deep respect for feminist leaders and has done a lot of inner work to come to terms with feminism’s history with race and class.

Yeah, this is not an easy post to write…but a sistah’s got to do what a sistah’s got to do.

Gloria Steinem has an Op-Ed in the New York Times titled Women Are Never Front-Runners. I read the Op-Ed and I feel compelled to address it here.

I highly recommend that you read the piece before you go on reading this post.

After reading Steinem’s Op-Ed I felt invisible…as if black and woman can’t exist in the same body. I felt undocumented…as if the history of blacks and the history of women have nothing to do with the history of black women.

When I read “Black men were given the vote a half-century before women of any race were allowed to mark a ballot, and generally have ascended to positions of power, from the military to the boardroom, before any women (with the possible exception of obedient family members in the latter).” I felt both attacked and ignored at the same time.

I think of the women and men in my family who were not extended the protected vote until 1965. I wince at the lack of acknowledgment for the black women of Birmingham, Selma and Montgomery who had to march with their brothers in the 1960s to attain the vote because the suffrage movement abandoned them in a Southern strategy to get the vote in 1920.

And there it is again…that invisibility; like a brutal weight that I am so bloody tired of carrying.

Read more

Sphere: Related Content

Help Save Pretty Bird Woman House…

Shark Fu has a simple but very important request. Please help save this important place by giving what ever you can. Visit AngryBlackBitch’s blog here.
According to a recent Amnesty International report, more than one in three American Indian and Alaskan Native women will be raped or sexually assaulted in their lifetime. Domestic violence is also a serious problem. Often victims have nowhere to turn due to poverty, remote geography and tangled legal jurisdictions.

Local women’s shelters can make a dramatic difference in helping women cope with the effects of violence, and helping them escape from situations where further violence is likely.

Too often, these shelters are chronically under funded.

Zintkala Waste Win Oti (”Pretty Bird Woman House”) has run out of funding and will be forced to close in May if new resources can’t be found to fund it. It serves the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, which is on the border of North and South Dakota. The shelter was founded by Jackie Brown Otter after the kidnapping, rape and murder of her sister (whose Lakota name means Pretty Bird Woman).

As a shelter volunteer in my home town of St. Louis Missouri, I know how important local shelters are and I know how hard it is to keep the doors open.

Please help Pretty Bird Woman House keep the door open if you can.

Pretty Bird Woman House Chip In

Related Post by Andy Ternay over at Shakesville

Pretty Bird Woman House

Thanks.

Sphere: Related Content