How Far Still To Go?

I am confused. My stomach is churning and my throat is tight. I am angry and frustrated. I cannot seem to understand.

We are still fighting for gender equality on so many fronts. On the news the night I write this, there were stories of: rape and sexual assault in the halls of power, women marching in the streets, giving voice to the desire for freedom to walk the streets at night, or during the day, to end violence against women.

Hell, I know what it’s like to walk with my keys sticking out between my fingers in case I need a weapon. I’ve stopped walking and running with headphones so I have better situational awareness. I know rape and assault victims. I’ve been harassed and sexually threatened. I had a work colleague lay hands on me, even after I told him several times I wasn’t interested. I had to tell him I would ram his balls far up inside him if he so much as thought of doing it again. When I was younger I said something to my mother that resulted in her ensuring tiny child me was never left alone with a certain someone. These are the sort of things that are my reality, and the reality of women and girls everywhere.

And then!!!

In the same news program – yep the one where women are trying to get the point across, yet again, that we are more than objects, we have our own value completely independent of our sex, there was another story. This one was a piece focused on celebrity, specifically an event celebrating celebrity, honouring the artists many worship at the altar of. Then on my screen I see and hear two women crawling about on a giant bed singing about wet pussies and being fucked, and similar.

Let me make something abundantly clear, I do not understand how this can be considered remotely empowering for women. This crap reinforces the outdated, yet still sadly prevalent attitude that a women’s value lies predominantly in her sexuality.

I am a woman who works in a male dominated industry, who is raising daughters and trying to reinforce in them that their value lies in who they are as people, not how big their boobs are, or how round their butt is, how they shake it, or in how many boys want to sleep with them. I want better for them.

I am no prude, I swear way more than I used to and I even use the C word, which used to be totally off limits, though to be fair I do like the history of that word. However, using language some consider offensive doesn’t mean you are empowered. Shaking your arse in public doesn’t elevate the status of women. Claiming your sexuality doesn’t mean you shove it down other people’s throats. You do not have to act in a manner that reinforces the bullshit idea that a woman’s value lies in how she looks and how she plays to an audience in a sexual way.

I don’t believe packaging something under the umbrella of art, makes it beneficial to gender equality. Stooping to the level of those who do the very thing we are trying to change, and flipping the language from male to female, doesn’t empower.

Women have so much more to offer than how they look. For all the steps we take forward, in acknowledging and openly talking about the fact misogyny is still a very real problem, we still have a long way to go. Violence against women is still a very real problem. We need to teach different foundations and boundaries of acceptability, and it is slow going.

Thing is, and it may not be popular to say, it is not just men who are the problem.