Tags
"religious freedom", feminism, personal is political, president of the united states, true equality, war on women, women's rights
Unite Against the War On Women 2012
Everything is political. Then, it’s my right to be myself, my right to my body, my right to be a fully participating member of society. Somehow, none of that seems like it should be political. And yet, I can think of only a very short time in my life when I thought it wasn’t.
That was before I realized a woman hadn’t ever been president of the United States. When I realized that, I was actually pretty devastated. I felt like the world around me was a lie. Consciously or not, that was when I realized everything was political. It all unfolds from there.
Politics are making women’s bodies the property of the government, the conversation of the people, and at the disposal of this soap opera state of elections and the drama of the extreme right wing and all the people fighting against their restrictive controlling laws.
The fact that the people of our nation never voted a woman into office was as upsetting as the fact that no woman had been president. This does not only say that the people of our nation don’t believe a woman can handle the presidency, it says the people don’t believe the world is ready to deal with a woman in a position of such power. And in fact, the way women continue to be treated, the world probably isn’t ready for it. But if there is ever hope for true equality, it will be a real possibility and a step toward that equality.
And so, here we are and the political continues to change my rights as a person. When women fought for the right to vote and won, that was political. It was politics.
We are living in a time right now when people are so determined for women to be controlled they are making a great case for the rights of fetuses. More than for women’s rights. More than for women’s health. More than for a woman’s right to be an autonomous human being.
I don’t understand how politics has been so twisted to make people believe that the rights of a fetus, that may or may not even make it to full term as a human baby, are more important than a woman’s right to live. It is more important to many people at this point in time that a partially formed fetus have the right to see if it can make it to babydom than a woman has to stay alive when that fetus might kill her.
This horrifies me. As a woman and as a person, it’s absolutely despicable!
People have been throwing around the term “religious freedom,” saying they have the “religious freedom” to put fetuses rights above a woman’s right to her body, around rape, healthcare, and the ending of a pregnancy.
I actually don’t believe this has been such an agenda of churches and religions until recently. Some people have been anti-choice, but more and more people are now because the conversation has shifted. I believe, it’s a political move to push women out of power. Under the guise of “religious freedom” women’s right to their bodies can be stripped away.
It’s a catch-22 and it’s a cycle. It’s decided for women that women can’t make their own choices, leaving women less legally able to make those choices so then everyone says, “See, women can’t make their own choices.”
In the news, I regularly see women being killed, beaten, raped. These are ways to control women. Extreme ways, but ways that have been used forever. Now that those ways are already in place, people who want women to be controlled, can just say we are sluts or hysterical, or that rape can’t get women pregnant, and we quiet down for fear of further “punishment,” humiliation or public shaming.
Even if women aren’t backing down, the conversation of the time is altering the way women are being seen. The politics of the day are shaping the role of women and women’s rights.
Suddenly people are talking about women’s bodies even more in a way that allows women to be objectified and owned. We’ve already been treated that way by the media, but politics are making women’s bodies the property of the government and supposed “religious freedom” is making it a moral, ethical, and spiritual right to control women and our bodies.
If as women, we do not continue to fight for what is ours and for what we deserve as equal citizens of this country, we will be again, little more than property for political fodder.
