International Women's Day... For the Ladies!

And for the guys who get it. :o)



I don't usually cry at Youtube videos, but really, the Suffragettes Rocked! About the time the United States was voting to give women the vote my family was in Eastern Europe stealing horses (Or not, possibly not, I do know Great-Grandpa was a mercenary thought. MeeMaw swears he never stole horses though. Winning them at poker games doesn't count, even if you cheat.). As an individual, I've been amazingly lucky. I've never run into the kind of misogyny and bigotry.

I expected to run into it in college. When I told people I wanted to study marine biology (considered a hard science) I thought I'd run into a crochety old professor who thought women belonged in the home. My alma mater (Florida Institute of Technology) totally rocked and the worst I ever ran into were some old professors who were fine with bikinis for the dress code.

Again, when I said I wanted to write sci-fi I expected some male voice to jump up and say I couldn't because I had a vagina (because sci-fi must be typed with a dick? I have no idea...), it hasn't happened. Even with all the birth control and War on Women nonsense going around I live in a state where people are remarkably sane, birth control is readily available (along with cheap state-provided healthcare), and wearing whatever you want is the norm. Especially on the beach.

I got lucky. Not everyone has that.

This week in school Eldest is reading a book about a young girl surviving the Taliban take over in Afghanistan. She's nine, and furious on behalf of those girls who were denied an education (apparently you also need a dick to read or write - at least in some countries - don't ask me to explain, I missed that part of biology).

The right to vote was the first step towards making men and women equal. Why we even need to say in the year 2012 that men and women are equal I can't say. It's a given, right? People are people. Reproductive organs have limited functionality outside of actually reproducing and ensuring we keep the species alive. And so we move on.

Right now the political climate looks like, well, I'll be tasteful and refrain from commenting. The good news is: We've Got the Vote!

Keep that in mind next time the headlines make you seethe, take down names, and get voting when the day comes.