Upside down is an interesting position. Kids love to do that, challenge each other. Homeowners hate it, for it means they are in a losing financial position on their home. It is taken to mean a time or situation when things are not the way they are supposed to be. And it also means this.
A McDonalds is turning its arches upside down today, March 8. Why? So that instead of an M, it looks like a W. W for Women. It is International Women's Day. Not much notice given - as usual. But why even this day is the bigger question or issue.
Women are over half the world's population. The world cannot do without them. Even in countries where they are son obsessed, so much so that there is a daughter shortage, women are kidnapped to be the bride of some unmarried desperate guy. Female bodies are dug up to be reburied in a strange ceremony which makes the man and woman married in the afterlife. So the world needs them in a very elemental sense, a basic need. But there is more to it.
While women are increasingly being promoted or going into formerly "male" professions, there is still too much of a difference. A difference in promotions. A difference in respect. A major and increasingly divulged position of being sexually harassed and attacked. A position of being ignored, treated as children, not really serious people. The "little woman". The woman who keeps home and hearth going, keeps a job, wrestles with the children, keeps the finances of the family on an even keel - this is the "little woman".
But when does this end? When does it become a norm that all are equal in rank according to ability, not gender. When does it cease to matter if one is male, female or gender fluid? What is important is the brain, the heart, the soul and the moral heart of an individual. It is generally not the woman who gets in trouble for harassing a male employee underling. It is the rare politician like the governor who had an affair - consensual - with her head of security. It is the woman head of government or participant in governments who is willing to talk, to avoid war, who feels the death of every soldier, every civilian as a child, as someone's son or daughter. As hers.
Women. Can't live with them and can't live without them. I hate that statement and it is easily changed to substitute men for women. Why this antagonism? Why this gender competition? We waste so much energy and brain power over this nonsense, lose so much that the world needs. Time to change. Time for the world to grow up. But will it ever happen that there will be such a time, when women are not looked upon as war booty, when rape is not used as a tactic of war, when girls are not kidnapped en masse from schools, from villages and used as forced brides or sex slaves?
The world can be such a better place. If only. We would not have a president whose lawyer has been trying to get a secret gag order placed on the woman with whom he had an affair - while he was married for the third time and just had a new baby. People have affairs, but when they deny them - uh uh, something stinks and when they are a habit, uh uh again. There needs to be a moral backbone in our leaders. Even the good ones have played around, but never so openly and defiantly as this man Trump.
We have a swamp beyond all understanding as lobbyists are receiving ethics waivers for the asking and being appointed to jobs in the very areas of their lobbying. There go the safety regulations. There go the public service ideals. I bet if we had a woman in charge there would be less of this garbage going around.
So look around, people. Think of all the women in your life. Mother. Daughter. Sister. Relative. Boss. Subordinate. Enemy. Friend. So varied. So different in each person. Have respect for all of them for we are all human beings here on this relatively small planet orbiting in space and we truly need to get along and value each and every one of us. Women's International Day. About time and yet too little too late.
And anyway, we all know women are the best!!
No comments:
Post a Comment