*Disclaimer: nothing in this post is an attack on people, just words and facts from a woman about being a woman.
International Women's Day was on March 8, and people all over the world spent the day celebrating, appreciating, and loving on women.
Women are life-givers, growing human beings inside of them and then giving birth to them. Women are world-changers like Malala Yousafzai, Michelle Obama, Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, Marie Curie, and Susan B. Anthony just to name a few who have paved the way for women and civil rights. Women are beautiful and valuable no matter what the media or men or other women may say about them. Women are survivors. Women are intelligent. Women are talented. Women are not just their bodies. Women are not weak. Women are not bossy for being leaders. Women are not 'on that time of the month' every time they fight back. Women are not meant to all look the same even though the media and society want us to look a specific way.
The reason things like feminism exist is because women are told from a very young age they aren't good enough. America just elected a President who has publicly shamed women during his campaign. Women are still not getting equal opportunity or equal pay. "Like a girl" is still seen as a demeaning comment when it should be a compliment. Women all around the world are denied the right to education- even in America with dress code taken so seriously for girls that they can be sent home and miss class because "their shoulders/ankles/neck were distracting to the boys". Women are denied the right to free and safe healthcare, and are told that if they aren't a certain color, don't have a certain hair style, a certain body, or weigh a certain amount, then they're not beautiful. Here are some quotes from a video on Facebook of Australian schoolboys repeating what the women in their lives said in response to why they needed feminism:
"A few months ago a guy decided for me that I wanted to have sex with him. I didn't want to."
"When I was 12, my dad told me I should be ashamed of my body and that I had thunder thighs."
"One day my dad told me I should be ashamed of having a flat chest because boobs are all men really care about. He said if any man had to choose between a caring, intelligent, and pretty woman with a flat chest or a shallow, less accomplished woman with a massive chest, that they'd always choose the second."
The things said in this video are not things that happen one in a million. They've definitely happened to your friend, daughter, sister, cousin, aunt, even your mom. Supporting women doesn't make you less of a person, it doesn't mean you have to start believing in things like abortion if you didn't believe in it before, it doesn't mean you have to support the radical feminists who sometimes take it too far. But no human being should be treated any differently from the other. Everyone bleeds the same blood and at the end of the day, everyone is just flesh and bones.
