Misogyny
Misogyny: A dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women. (Oxford English Dictionary)
Back in December, there was a story about a 70 year old woman in Paris whose husband would drug her, call his friends to come over, where they would proceed to rape her while the husband filmed it. He had over forty tapes. The men were all tried in court. Their defense was that the husband said it was okay, so they thought it was fine.
The husband.
The woman could have stayed anonymous, but she wanted to be seen and heard so that maybe someone else would be spared what she was going through.
Such a brave woman. History is littered with brave women who were brave enough, strong enough, to speak out, stand up, be counted, pave the way. The Suffragettes, who fought , and eventually won, the right for women to vote in 1920 with the 19th Amendment. Do you know the State of Mississippi didn’t ratify the 19th Amendment until 1984? We got our first female federal judge, Genevieve Rose Cline, in 1928, and our first female cabinet member thanks to FDR in 1933, when Francis Perkins became the Secretary of Labor. In 1983 Sally Ride became the first female in space, in 1997 we got our first female Secretary of State with Madeline Albright, 1981 brought us Sandra Day O’Connor as the first female Supreme Court Justice, and in 1984 Geraldine Ferraro became the first female running mate for a vice-presidential candidate on a major political party ticket. Hillary Clinton became the first woman presidential candidate for a ticket of a major political party in 2016. 2007 gave us the first female Speaker of the House with Nancy Pelosi. Of course, Kamala Harris finally succeeded in becoming Vice President in 2021.
There are milestones where laws are concerned also. Until 1974, women could be refused a credit card if they didn’t have their husband’s permission to get one. It wasn’t until 1973 that women could officially serve on a jury in all 50 states. It became illegal in 1971 to not hire a woman just because she had preschool aged children. In 1971, a state law was struck down that automatically gave men preference in administering a will. 1981 saw the end of laws that gave husband unilateral control of jointly owned property. 1978 brought us the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, wherein women couldn’t be fired for being pregnant. There are so many, and behind each one are women fighting for their rights. For my rights. For your rights.
Take a moment to look back on those dates. Women have been in this country, on this earth as long as men, and yet most of these milestones are within my lifetime.
It doesn’t have to be a huge court case. Take the Me Too movement from 2006. This movement gave women the courage to speak out and stand up to sexual violence. Women all over social media, all over the world, were standing up, standing together, to say “me too”. It was a powerful demonstration of how prevalent the problem is. And it brought about change.
Not enough, or this may not have happened to this woman in Paris.
We need to do better. We need to stand together and fight. It is more important now than ever before. To stand together.
I hope, even if we don’t agree on everything, we can at least agree on this. That there should be no place in this world for the hate. The violence. That we should live in a world in which violence against an unconscious woman is not okay. Don’t you think so?
Me, Too
Kathie