Tag Archives: musings

Been thinking a lot lately about the state of the world and women in it. Our common experience as women who live in a world populated with people who are bigger than us, stronger than us, hormonally more aggressive than us coupled with the vagaries of our various political structures, social networks and economic opportunities, and I’d bet you’d be surprised if I told you we as American, and western, women have more in common with our sisters in the middle east than we do without spouses lying in bed next to us. You are probably calling me crazy. Discounting my opinion.

If I told you that it is my considered opinion that women are still oppressed and treated as lesser class, you’d scoff and tell me that we’ve come so far, baby.

Then I’d point out that the likelihood of being raped isn’t so vastly different in different parts of the world. Sure, there are surges in war torn areas and areas filled with chaos. But in those areas who are just poor, just third world without so much external strife, the statistics are damning. And I’d go on to compare health care given (not merely available but actually accessed) is on par as well. There are far more parallels than opposites. Not even going into the similarities of how a society can keep an entire gender pinned down, the injury done to women physically is the same the world over. In just this one thing, being secure in our own bodies, every women on this planet is at risk. Most often, that risk comes from the home or the home neighborhood.

As the title of this post suggests, I want all women to begin to empower themselves. Take a gun class. Do I think a gun will make shit better tomorrow? No. But it will give you a feeling of empowerment. If you’re morally opposed to firearms, take a taser class or a stun-gun class or a pepper spray class. Take a damn class. Go to self-defense classes. Take martial arts. Become stronger in your body so it can help you get stronger in your mind.

None of these classes are intended to make you think you can take on a dude twice your size. The best and first course of action should always be to get away, get help and cause a commotion to get noticed. But maybe the class will give you the confidence to think of how to get away instead of falling apart, or to create an opportunity that can be exploited. It might be the difference between tragedy and triumph.

Every woman should be safe in her body. It is a travesty that this is not so. A many-pronged approach to resolving the problem needs to happen. One of those prongs is making women stronger in their bodies. There are all kinds of strength. By acquiring one, we help bolster them all.

The following random thoughts are slightly controversial. You’ve been warned.

I read that people who eat their boogers have a better immune system. Totally gross and makes a weird kinda sense. But I write romance books and so my mind turned toward other bodily secretions that might help boost immune systems. In addition to being a romance writer, I am a sarcastic bitch. So my next thought was… now how can dudes market this to help position for greatest advantage? Cause if it ever came out that swallowing had health benefits and was good for you, well, I know in my heart of hearts that men won’t let that pass unnoticed. I’m not sure it’s in them to let it pass. I can see the ad campaigns now and the Superbowl half-time commercials. lol

You can’t call yourself pro-life and not support welfare to the maximum. You can’t say that women have to have kids and then provide no way for those very women to feed those kids. It is not logical. You also should be adopting babies left and right to provide for them as well. This needs to be said because I see advocates of getting rid of abortion in America also advocating getting rid of welfare at the same time. So you punish the babies for the indiscretions of the parents? How is that pro-life? Seems like you hate us all because those hungry babies grow up to be hungry adults. And then, nothing about life is sacred because those kids are going to take out their anger on us all. And those that acted to mold them, and those that didn’t act but merely looked on, wouldn’t a small part of the retribution be deserved? Because it was preventable. Some things go together like peas and carrots. One is Forrest and Jenny. The other is feeding the babies that are being forced to be born. Or adopting them to feed and raise them. It’s all about the feeding and clothing and housing of the kids. Really. I just never hear about how adoption laws and money ear marked for the kids being born to the women denied contraception and other services are at the forefront of the pro-life debate. So what? The kids are born only to die of starvation or neglect? I’m cool with either position on this debate in America–see I have enough money to do what I want in the country of my choice when I want regardless of the moralizing minority in this country… but I digress–but I want the logical conclusion of either position to be taken care of at the same time. Because this shit doesn’t happen in a vaccuum. In addition to the deaths brought on by back yard abortions–and if you’re cool with women dying by getting illegal abortions ask yourself… how Christian was that?–we are going to have a shitload of unwanted children. I want ALL of this resolved, not just the beginnings of life. If we as a society force children to be born to people who don’t want them, we are then obligated to take care of said children. End of.

I got nothing else right now. So… that is all.