Women's Rights And The Two Elephants in the Room

So, my thoughts have moved on from my recent post about women's rights.

This is not a pleasant post to write. But this is what I have in my head right now. It will no doubt come out in a jumble, because my brain is jumping from thought to thought at lightening speed.  This is not a happy post so I understand if you do not read further.  That is as close to a trigger warning as you will get from me.

So what am I talking about today? My fear.  That women may lose our rights, we just cannot see it yet. 

In order to look at where we are now, it is important to look back at where we were.

It is 98 years since all women were given the vote (some women were given that right in 1918 at the same time as men). It is 56 years since the Equal Pay Act was introduced (but was enacted 5 years later). It is 51 years since the Sex Discrimination Act.  It is 35 years since rape in marriage was recognised as a crime. (All UK) 

Only one of these is in living memory for me.  Aside from the vote, all are in living memory for my mother.

In the space of 100 years we have gained the vote, the right to equal pay, the right not to be discriminated against because of our sex or marital status.  We have gained the right to have credit in our own name with needing a male co-signer.  We are able to report sexual violence by our husbands to the police and it be recognised as a crime.

It is shocking to be honest that it took until 1991 for the last one to happen.  Before that, it was deemed that a woman gives irrevocable consent to her husband when she marries him.  

Could modern day women even comprehend that the women who came before us could vote, work, have a mortgage and hold our own money, yet access to our bodies by our husbands was permissible until one Judge said different.  Because it was one case that changed the law, not an act of parliament.

Therein lies one of the problems women are facing. Unless you are Gen X or older and live in a first world country, you do not truly know what it was like to be treated and deemed as secondary to a man in terms of our worth. Treated almost like a child who needed supervision.  Whose bodies belonged to our husbands. 

Women today are more independent than we have ever before. We have money, we have equality, we have choices. We can choose to marry if we want, or not. We can choose to have children, or no. We are free. 

Or are we? 

Because what I have come to understand more and more over the past few years is freedom is an illusion. Because we are not free. You cannot be free if that freedom can be taken away. And it can. And possibly, it will be. 

We have already had the precursor. Abortion rights in the US. 

I am not starting an abortion debate here.  It matters not whether you are pro life or pro choice.  My point does not focus on that.

It is the way that the law is being implemented that is the truly terrifying part. Because abortion bans could be just that. An abortion ban, either limited to a number of weeks or none at all. But they have gone beyond that. 

 There are some women have been prosecuted for having a miscarriage despite evidence that this was the case. Women have died because the fetus inside them was worth more than saving her life.  Women have been forced to carry a dead baby to term. Women have been forced to carry a baby that will not live outside of the womb. A brain dead woman in a coma was kept alive until a time when her baby could be retrieved by caesarean.

That isn't about healthcare or the rights of a fetus. Can you even imagine the horror of carrying your baby, knowing that it's survival is impossible, for months, until you deliver and that baby that you wanted so much, is dead.  

That is torture. 

You also have to look how the actions of some women are blamed on all women. 

For example, the girls who have made their career on Onlyfans. I don't agree with it or their actions, and I wonder where their actual self worth and self respect have gone. But the rhetoric is that because some women/girls do this, it is apparently proof that all women are clearly whores when left to their own devices. 

I now touch on the Clancy trial, which is a mess from beginning to end. All of it and from every side.  I do not agree with the women protesting at the Court house and I think some of the women who have posted about it on TikTok have lost their goddamn minds. But I understand that that is their opinion (and their right to have it and say it). But again, the actions of some women are being judged against all women. 

Calls to remove our right to vote. Worry about women being in any kind of important position. How can you be a doctor, a teacher, a solicitor, anyone in charges if our hormones can one day make us go psychotic. This is simplistic, of course. Psychosis affects only 0.1% of mothers and the majority of those get the help they need and they recover. 

But we are not judged the same way that men are. And we never will be.  

Men commit the majority of violent crimes. They commit around 90-95% of all whole family murders (US stats). What I am afraid to to say is, that it does not matter.  

The double standard of not all men, but apparently, yes, all women.   

A man commits an atrocity and the response is “Not all men.”  Worse, what did she do to provoke him, what was he going through etc etc 

A woman commits an atrocity and suddenly there are questions about women's judgement, women's hormones, women's suitability for responsibility, women's emotional stability, women's ability to hold office, women's ability to make decisions.

I mention in the title to this post about there being two elephants in the room.  I will touch on the second later. 

The first is that, I hate to type this, I hate to think this, but the men who say "take rights from women because ......." are not saying it for mere effect. They understand that it can happen. May happen. Yes, may happen.  Because rights that are given, can be taken.  And that it what we have forgotten. 

We didn't take out rights by force. We fought for them, yes, absolutely. But ultimately, we were still given them.  It isn't even just ordinary men (and some women) who are saying that our rights should be taken away. It is some of the people who run the country (US). 

Think about it. 

Again I look at abortion rights in the US and the examples I give above. Women can vote, have our own money, run our own lives, hold power, run for office, rule the country. Yet in a country where women can have it all and many do, the rights to their bodies were taken.  

In an increasing amount of cases, that were nothing to do with the rights of a fetus.  And there was nothing that women could do about it. 

I hate to agree with what some men say on the matter, because the fact is, we have forgotten that men are stronger physically than women and that is important. We cannot physically defend ourselves and if men chose to subjugate us again, there is nothing we can actually do about it. See above as the clearest example. 

Physical strength does not enact laws of course. Power does. And that is why the physical strength comes into it. Because if laws change, we cannot physically fight back as a man can. Our voices will matter none. 

Margaret Atwood knew it. Deep down, so do we. 

We live on a tightrope that we have forgotten we live on. We have become complacent. And that is a massive fucking problem. 

I know what I don't want to do, and never will. I will never look at another woman's actions, thoughts and beliefs and think that that it applies to all women. I believe that each person is responsible only for their own actions. 

But what I am beginning to realise, way, way too fucking late, is that this will be our downfall. 

Because we do not live in the same world as men. 

We have spent decades presuming that every generation of women would have more freedom than the one before it. Perhaps that is the most dangerous assumption of all. Because history doesn't work that way. 

Rights aren't a staircase that only goes upwards. They are laws. And laws can be changed. 

We do not have our rights because the world finally decided that women deserved them. Women fought, protested, campaigned and sometimes sacrificed themselves for them. Some suffragettes were tortured in prison for it. 

Perhaps the thing we have forgotten is not how far we've come. Perhaps it is that we can go backwards. 

And we can go backwards.  The rights of women will be judged as a failed social experiment.

What do we do with/about what I have said above? I have no clue. That is again is the problem. We are way past the starting gate. We just didn't realise, or we forgot, about the rope that tethered us to the starting gate. That can be pulled back. 

We were so concerned about freedom and our rights, that we forgot that we needed to protect them and keep them safe. We shouldn't have to. But the sad fact is that we do.  And we may have to fight, all over again.

Women as a whole are not prepared for what may happen. And that is fucking terrifying and makes me angry as hell.  That women as a whole are judged on the views of a few.   That is not equality.  It is a game that was played as part of a whole.

On that point, we move on to the second elephant in the room. That goes way further down the rabbit hole. The problem actually is not men versus women, women versus men. We have been pitted against each other. And never more so than today. Because the puppet masters, the people who are actually in charge of this world want us to fight with each other. 

They want the drama. They want the distractions. Which go far beyond men versus women, women versus men. 

Because the people who are in power can only operate successfully if no one notices the man behind the curtain. 

They pit us against ourselves and create new issues for us to fight about (look at the trans debate for example) in order to distract us from the laws they change, the plans they make and want to enact. 

While we squabble, the whole world is changing around us and not for the better. 

In short, we are all screwed. 

Or, perhaps we're not. 

Perhaps the first step is simply remembering that the tightrope is there and the majority of the planet are balancing on it. Unlike the circus. we do not have a safety net below us. But collectively, we can choose to get off that tightrope and face the puppet masters. 

Stop fighting each other and face the real enemy in the room.

That ship has not yet sailed.

Life Does Begin at 40

Everyone knows the phrase "Life begins at 40".  But I don't really think that it is something that you can ever understand, until you actually reach your 40s.

Let's face it, being in your 20s and 30s is a lot of fun, but also has a lot of pressure attached to it, whether you are a woman or a man, but I am a woman, so here is my perspective.

Your 20s and 30s are all about goals, societal pressures; family pressures; trying to find "the one".  Educate yourself, find the right career, establish yourself in that career, find your partner, have a family (if you choose to), look after your children, juggle, everything.

They say that your frontal lobe does not fully develop until you hit 25, but it isn't really until you reach your 40s that you actually start to become yourself and more than that, own who you are.   You care less what people think.  You have spent enough time with yourself to actually know who you are, what you want and what makes you happy.  What makes you, you and what makes you tick.  You no longer feel the need to fit in.

These days I think of life as being in two halves.  The life you had before 40 and the one you have after.  Each can be amazing, but different.

The first half of my life was not amazing.  But everything after I turned 40 has been on an upward trajectory that still has not stopped.  I am happier every single year.  I remind myself of that every day.  How lucky I am.  

I think what I have realised as I have grown and especially since I hit my 40s is that we are not passengers in this life.  We need to interact, move through life and not become stagnant.   We need to truly look at ourselves.  Our flaws, our talents.  Things we would like to change.  Things that we would like to promote.

And then do it.

Take the leap.  Do the scary thing.  Say the thing you aren't supposed to.  Do, whatever the hell you want to.  Say no when you want.  Say yes when you want.  Look into yourself and heal your demons because now you are stronger than they are.

When you hit menopause, ride that wave.  You will find that you no longer give a fuck, about anything; and that is just wonderful.

I will always remember my grandmother who used to be such a well dressed lady, with beautiful auburn hair.  When she reached 65, she stopped bothering to dye her hair and she cared much less about what she wore.  In one way I think hell yes, embrace who you are and don't dress for other people.  

But the reason she gave for the change in her ways was simply "I am old now".  She accompanied this by not doing anything else with her life, apart from sitting and watching television.  She ended up having over 20 years more in her life, yet she had decided that her life had ended at 65.  I never want that to happen to me.

Since reaching my 40s, I have grown more as a person than I have for the previous 40 years.  I have had the courage to try new experiences, see and do new things.  For example, I love music and there have been DJs that I have always wanted to see.  In the past few years I have seen the majority of DJs that I have always wanted too; with the remaining two coming up in the next year. 

My 20s and 30s were the grounds on which I started to learn who I was.  Now I know who I am, what I am and what I am capable of.  I advocate for myself now.   I am proud of who I have become and the journey I have taken to get there.

I care nothing now of what other people think about me.  If you like me, wonderful.  If you don't, goodbye.  I will not waste my time, energy and love on people who do not deserve it.  I will not waste my thoughts on people whom I would not take advise from.

Reaching your forties equals freedom.  Freedom of your mind.  Freedom to be yourself with no apologies.  The freedom to go and have that meal in a restaurant on your own if you want to, or indulge a spa day for some self care.

Everyone has dreams and aspirations.  Be it a successful career, a family, being married, goals you have set for yourself.  All of those things are good, but if you are not happy in yourself, there will always be something missing.

Being in my 40s now means that there is nothing missing.  I found myself.  I found the life I wanted to have, and I am living it.  I have friends, loved ones, my partner.  There is no lacking in my life because I do the things that I want.  

Your earlier life was work.  Working on yourself, who you wanted to be, what you wanted to be.  Living up to expectations, or at least trying to.  Trying to please other people, meet their expectations.  Saying yes when you really meant no.

Reaching your 40s means that that journey is over.  Your new one begins and the best part, you can take the rest of your life wherever you want.  On your terms.

Embrace it.  Enjoy it.  We only get one life.  Let's really live it.